


Truth is Stranger

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Friendship, Gen, M/M, Missing Persons, Paranormal, Team Dynamics, The Void, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-10-05 06:13:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 49,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17319491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: “It’s been three weeks, Benny. You’ve been gone three weeks. We found you next to the riverbank, by the first campsite. Only a twenty minute hike from the entrance. Half frozen to death – the doctors say it’s just that jacket that kept you from….but it’s summer – how could you be frozen? And how did you have enough food? I thought it would have been starvation, or dehydration.”“Someone saved me,” Ben tells his mom with all the certainty he can. “There was a monster, and someone saved me.”





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Hello! This very long fic, the second longest thing I have written, is in fact complete as of right now! Go me! 
> 
> It's great timing too, because in three days, I'm leaving to live/travel abroad until mid-May, severely cutting into my writing time, so I can't promise anything for the next few months. Anything other than this monstrosity! I'm going to figure out how to get the chapters drafted in AO3, so you'll get regular updates of this while I'm gone!
> 
> I plan on posting Chapter One tomorrow to get a meatier start to this, but after that, all updates will be each subsequent week. It won't quite last until I'm back in the country, but hopefully I can still do some writing while abroad, just much less frequently.
> 
> I'm super proud of this fic, I worked pretty damn hard on it this past week to make sure I could finish it before I left, so I hope everyone enjoys!

Ben’s mom is going to kill him.

Literally straight-up murder him, probably – she _told_ Ben to come home straight away from school, but Ben knew she wouldn’t be there regardless of what he did, working her second job at the gas station all evening.

So he’d decided not to go home right away. Instead of his usual after school routine of going out to Begley’s Bait and Tackle to beg Ron to take him out on the lake to look for Kingsey, he decided that today was bright and sunny enough that Perdition Wood didn’t scare him anymore.

He’s twelve, basically an adult, and super brave and courageous, not to mention curious, and Perdition Wood is just a bunch of trees. Sure, there are some scary stories about the trees, but isn’t that what makes the adventure of hiking up into them all the more exciting?

Now, hours and hours later – Ben doesn’t know how long it’s been, he doesn’t have a watch – the sun is setting and Ben’s fear is growing.

He’s twelve, still a little kid, and defenseless and alone in a dense forest of trees that are closing in around him and narrowing his path.

The sun slips out of the sky.

Ben shivers, pulling his denim jacket tighter around him. It’s only September, and it had been so hot this morning. Now Ben’s shivering like it’s the middle of winter.

The moon is high, high in the sky, the only source of light for Ben’s trek. He tried to turn around a long time ago but the trees aren’t the same anymore. They’re taller and darker and look like monsters meant to swallow him up.

There’s a voice in his head that isn’t his own, and it sounds like a monster, too. It says _further, further, go further, go further_ and Ben’s powerless against it.

He thinks of his mom and how she’s probably made it home by now, how she’s called for him and searched every room of their little house five times over to see if he’s hiding anywhere. He wonders if she’ll call the police, if the sheriff would send someone out to find him.

Ben’s plan is to shout the second he sees a light in the distance, but right now the only light is the moon. He hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight. He thought he’d hike for an hour and then run home and his mom would be none the wiser to his little outing.

Ben tries to remember his geography classes – can’t you follow a star? Doesn’t a star go north?

It’s hard to see the stars through all the trees, though Ben kind of thinks there are none there right now. At least the moon is big enough to peak through and light the forest path.

Until suddenly the moon is gone too, out like a flashlight, and with it any hope Ben has of getting out of here tonight. Or maybe ever. He doesn’t have any more food, and only a swallow more of water from his water bottle that he’s saving for an emergency.

Ben thinks about sitting down to rest, but the voice in his head keeps going _further, further, further_ and Ben knows that if he doesn’t listen to it, he’s going to die.

He’s twelve years old and he doesn’t want to die alone in a forest, his mom waiting up for him at home.

Ben isn’t sure if he believes in God but he asks over and over again as he walks, crying quietly to himself _please, please let me get back to my mom. Please let me get back to my mom._

The forest responds by getting darker and deeper. Ben counts the trees he sees to keep calm, but it doesn’t work, and before long he’s burst into tears, awful wet sobs that make it impossible to see through his watering eyes.

He’s going to die here.

His legs hurt so badly that Ben can’t keep going, and before long, he stumbles of the path and slumps down against a tree, trying to pull his jacket around his shoulders more tightly, but it’s no use. The cold just keeps persisting.

Ben thinks about his mom as he closes his eyes, ignoring the rushing feeling in his head that the monster is going to get him.

Everything else happens so quickly, and hardly anything sticks in Ben’s memory. He remembers shadows creeping in on him. He remembers what feels like a black bolt of lightning striking him in the heart as a maniacal laugh rings out above him.

He remembers someone scooping him up and holding him close. He remembers someone wrapping their jacket around him and a voice saying _good thing you’re so small, kid._

He remembers waking up in an ambulance, his mom sobbing over him.

Later, in the hospital, she tells him, voice wobbling, “It’s been three weeks, Benny. You’ve been gone three weeks. We found you next to the riverbank, by the first campsite. Only a twenty minute hike from the entrance. Half frozen to death – the doctors say it’s just that jacket that kept you from….but it’s summer – how could you be frozen? And how did you have enough food? I thought it would have been starvation, or dehydration.”

Ben’s still wrapped in the unfamiliar jacket. He runs is fingers slowly over the soft, warm inside. It’s red and black checkered, and the biggest jacket Ben’s ever worn.

“Someone saved me,” Ben tells her with all the certainty he can. “There was a monster, and someone saved me.”

His mom just shakes her hand with wide eyes and starts to cry again.

No one believes Ben, but he knows. Someone saved him.


	2. Chapter One

“Ben? It’s back.”

Ben’s glad Agent Spears isn’t in the room with him, because his mouth falls open as he struggles for air, nearly starting to hyperventilate. He pushes the phone away from his mouth for a moment so she can’t hear his panic before he says, breathless into the receiver “Holy shit. Where?”

“Now, Ben,” Reagan’s usual reprimanding tone when she calls Ben with official FBI business is in full swing today. “You know that’s confidential.”

“You wouldn’t have called me if you couldn’t tell me anything,” Ben reminds her, his heart racing. His eyes wildly search his office for something to do with his hands to stop them from shaking. He has no idea what happened to his fidget spinner – he keeps having to buy new ones, he loses his so often.

He settles for balancing the phone between his shoulder and his ear as he stacks papers on his desk. He hasn’t organized this shit in ages – his tiny hole-in-the-wall office is a mess, but it’s his mess. Ben knows where everything is even if everyone who shows up for his office hours give him mildly concerned looks.

It’s fine. It’s cool. Ben always meets his bosses in their offices so they can’t see what their PhD students are wasting their time with. They’d find way too many lost fidget spinners in here, and then Ben might lose funding.

There are more important things to worry about right now, though.

“There was a disappearance,” Reagan says, and her voice takes on a hushed tone as if this is a secret between them. Ben’s palms start to sweat. “Same conditions – up in Alaska. Near Fairbanks.”

“Who?” Ben can barely breathe.

Reagan sighs. “A six year old kid. Nancy Fletcher. On a fishing trip with her parents.”

“Shit,” Ben’s mouth turns to lead. _Go further, further, further, Ben. Go further._ “When?”

“Three days ago,” Reagan says, voice grim. “I didn’t go up to investigate, but those who did say there’s no trace of her anywhere. The case is still being investigated, but I’m sorry to say that _paranormal forest_ isn’t high on the list of suspects. They think it’s a pedophile.”

“Reagan, please,” Ben says, trying not to let too much desperation seep into his voice. “Let me go up there – I’ve worked so hard –”

“Let me talk, Ben,” Reagan says, and Ben can hear the eye roll from the other side of the country. “I know you’ve done some pretty extensive research on alleged paranormal phenomenon, but you know perfectly well that the FBI doesn’t much care for spooks. There’s no need for an Agent Mulder here in reality, where we live.”

“And?” Ben huffs an impatient breath. Reagan’s told him this often enough over the years they’ve known each other.

Reagan makes an annoyed noise. “ _And_ the FBI doesn’t have much interest in finding out what the connection is between Nancy Fletcher’s disappearance and the others. All in very different parts of the country, I might add. Forests are forests, in their esteemed opinion. All forests are dangerous.”

“That’s not what this _is_ ,” Ben holds himself back from whining. “You know that the connection between these disappearances is far more complicated than your stupid fucking clueless bosses –”

“Ben,” Reagan says more sharply than usual, and Ben holds his tongue in surprise. “If Jack Wright couldn’t convince the government to investigate, I doubt you’re going to get much further. Now shut up so I can get to my point.”

“Fine,” Ben sets his mouth in a pout. Reagan can’t see that.

“The _FBI_ isn’t interested,” Reagan says, and Ben finds himself sitting up straighter at her knowing tone. “But a scientist here in the area _is_ interested, and she’s putting together a team of researchers.”

“Holy shit,” Ben’s heart practically stops. This is all he’s been waiting for since – well, practically since he woke up in a hospital when he was twelve. “Reagan, please, I need to get on that team.”

“Well, I can let her know that you’re interested, but she’s screening candidates to make sure that they’re taking this as seriously as she is,” Reagan starts but Ben breaks her off with a scoff.

“No one takes this more seriously than me!”

Ben’s aware he might have shouted, so he quickly lowers his voice to one of a professional PhD candidate researching parapsychology like an adult human being and controls his temper.

“I’m flying out to DC as fast as I can,” Ben says instead, voice measured, “to show this scientist whoever that I’m fucking _legit_.”

“Maybe don’t say fucking,” Reagan says dryly, but Ben can hear an almost-laugh. “I’ll give her your information, but flying out is a bit hasty. She might not want to actually go up to Alaska for weeks –”

“Does she _know_ how fast it disappeared last time?” Ben say, quick and impatient. “It was only in Colorado for a few weeks! And that was our last sighting! Almost three years ago!”

“Cool your jets, cowboy,” Reagan says. “I’m sure she knows all of this. You’re not the only person interested in this thing, you know. This –”

“Void,” Ben fills in for her. “Jack Wright called it the Void in his last paper he published before – well – and that’s how the community refers to it now.”

“The _community_ is a bunch of crazy hippies who believe in Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster,” Reagan says and Ben literally bites down on his lower lip to keep from saying something rude back to her. “Worry about the scientific community for now, Ben – and as for scientists who care about this Void, that’s pretty much limited to you and Dr. Potter.”

“Dr. Potter,” Ben repeats. “Excellent, I’ll look her up the second I get to DC. Probably tomorrow. I’m booking a flight right now.”

“I hate you,” Reagan sighs, and Ben grins, already formulating a plan of how to get to DC as fast as he possibly can.

When Ben arrives at the airport the next afternoon, he heads straight to the FBI Headquarters at Reagan’s behest. She’s probably going to tell him not to irritate every high-level official in DC while he’s here.

Ben plans on ignoring her soundly and doing just that.

Instead, when Ben gets to Reagan’s office, she gives him a gruff hug and says “Dr. Potter is interested in a meeting. I’ll drive you to her.”

“Really?” Ben beams, prepared to worship at Reagan’s feet for this.

“Don’t look so excited,” Reagan says with a roll of her eyes. “She still hasn’t gotten permission to enter the forest yet. There’s a research facility up nearby that’s deciding whether or not to let a team up there.”

“She should get it, their concerns will be mainly environmental, not supernatural,” Ben says with a wave of his hand as Reagan leads Ben through the FBI offices and out toward the parking lot. Reagan had told Ben he’d make a decent agent, but Ben had gone into academia instead.

Like Reagan said – the FBI wasn’t interested in an Agent Mulder, and that’s all Ben would be. They’d realize that and kick him out in an instant.

“Well, Dr. Potter is primarily interested in the environmental and not supernatural, as _no one but you_ cares about the supernatural,” Reagan says, a little too snidely for Ben’s liking, and he folds his arms over his chest in petulance as he gets into Reagan’s compact car.

“I bet she gives credence to the supernatural, though,” Ben argues. He read extensively about Dr. Emily Potter on his flight here – an environmental biologist, her research somewhat intersected with psychology in her papers about various ecosystems affecting inhabitants, even if it wasn’t related to Ben’s field of parapsychology. “She wouldn’t be interested in the Void otherwise.”

“Maybe,” Reagan hums, and they continue onto general personal questions – how’s Reagan’s job, if her new girlfriend is working out, has Ben died of starvation from being holed up in his office for days on end, typical stuff.

Ben doesn’t realize how nervous he is until they’re Georgetown where Dr. Potter’s laboratories are located and Ben has to walk inside to her office, so much bigger and brighter and more organized than his.

Not only that, but Dr. Emily Potter is possibly the most beautiful woman Ben’s ever seen. She has soft brown hair tied up in a knot with ringlets falling around her oval-shaped face, and her dark brown eyes are cheerful and warm, matching her smile, framed by dimples.

She takes Ben’s hand when he gets inside; her skin is soft and her nails are pink. She’s also at least three inches taller than he is.

Ben doesn’t know if he believes in love at first sight, but he suddenly has the urge to try and make Dr. Emily Potter smile as much as he can for the rest of his life.

“You must be Ben Arnold,” she says, voice soft like her hands, and Ben hears Reagan clear her throat pointedly from where she’s standing in the doorway.

Knowing Reagan’s glaring at him, Ben quickly clears his throat as well and says “It’s nice to meet you, Dr. Potter.”

“Please, call me Emily,” she says and she goes to sit behind her desk, and Ben awkwardly stumbles toward the chair on the other side, feeling sweaty and awkward and a bit like he’s sixteen all of a sudden.

“I’ll wait in the car, Ben,” Reagan says, giving him a knowing look and Ben hopes he isn’t blushing too hard. “Nice to see you again, Emily.”

“So Ben,” Emily says, smiling over at him, which just makes the palpitations in Ben’s chest worse. “Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself before we get started? What made you want to reach out to be a part of my team?”

“Um,” Ben says, and though he’s told the story many times, he suddenly feels awkward, like he’s twelve years old and in a hospital bed. “I’ve been interested in the Void since I was a kid. I grew up in King Falls, in Washington? I mean, I still live there, I teach nearby.”

“You’re a PhD candidate in psychology, yes?” Emily asks and Ben nods. “After Agent Spears mentioned you to me, I read one of your papers about UFO sightings. You believe in more than just the Void, I assume.”

“I mean, yeah,” Ben says, especially inarticulate right now. “King Falls – where I’m from – it’s known for its…paranormal attributes. And when I was a kid, one of those was the Void. It was out in Perdition Wood, just outside of town. I got lost there when I was twelve, and I almost died.”

“Oh my,” Emily says, and puts a hand on her chest. “And with poor Nancy Fletcher out there now…that must hit home.”

“Yeah,” Ben says, finding it a bit difficult to swallow. “It’s – not a great feeling. But thankfully, someone saved me and I made it out. I was terrified of the place for years until someone told me that it wasn’t like that anymore, that it was just a normal forest. I went to look for myself and – and they were right. It wasn’t paranormal anymore.”

“It moves,” Emily nods. “I’m familiar with the theory popularized by Jack Wright about a roving –”

“Roving void,” Ben nods rapidly, relieved that she’s read Jack Wright. Anyone familiar would know to take the paranormal more seriously than not. “Yeah, yeah, Jack Wright’s work is incredible – when I read his papers and saw he’d researched King Falls as a potential location, I knew that’s what it was. When he asked for people with experiences with the Void for his book, I – I almost reached out, but…well. You know what happened.”

“That’s what got me interested,” Emily says, picking up Jack Wright’s first book from the corner of her desk and showing it to Ben. _Shadows in the Dark_. “His disappearance. Before that, I discounted most of it as just urban legend – I mean, a shadowy forest that swallows people up? It sounds like a bad movie plot. But then he disappeared while researching it, same circumstances – no trace of him. And suddenly, I was interested.”

“I know,” Ben almost whispers, the horrible feeling he always gets when Jack Wright’s disappearance comes up settling in his gut. Ben loved Jack’s work, and practically hero-worshipped the guy at least from an academic point of view. His disappearance off the face of the earth had hit Ben hard.

Then again, all disappearances connected to the Void hit Ben hard.

“I wonder all the time,” Ben tries to explain to Emily, “why I was saved, back when I was a kid, and so many people have been gone for so many years. I mean, what makes me worthier than anyone else? I guess that’s my main interest in it – I want to know _how_ and _why_ and how to make sure it can’t happen to anyone else.”

The smile Emily gives him is so warm and full that Ben almost melts on the spot.

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, you’re on the team,” Emily says and Ben lets out a huge breath, his melancholy suddenly replaced with something like euphoria, but with more shaking. “Based on what happened when you were a kid, I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that this might be dangerous.”

Ben nods, and he thinks Emily can see the determined glint in his eye. She reaches across the table to shake his hand.

“I’m not quite through setting up a team, but I think there will be about six of us in total – small, but large enough that we can watch out for each other once we get to the area Nancy disappeared in Alaska. I’ll call you once we have the dates finalized.”

“Will it be soon?” Ben interrupts, feeling a bit unprofessional but knowing it needs to be asked. “I mean, sometimes the Void appears for years, but like with Jack –”

Emily nods, a grim look on her face. “Don’t worry, Ben. We’ll leave within the week.”

Ben isn’t long for DC after that, stopping only to get dinner with Reagan before he flies home to Washington. His mother picks him up at the airport in Spokane.

“Are you sure about this?” Betty frets as Ben explains it to her on their drive home. “I mean, I know you’re capable, honey – and you’ve done field work for your research before. But if you’re right and this is really – you know – _real_ –”

“I’ll be careful, Mom,” Ben promises her, reaching across the car to pat Betty’s wrist. “I’ll be with a team – I think mainly of scientists? People way smarter than me, that’s for sure.”

Betty laughs, but there’s a nervous quality to it.

“You’re an adult, you can make your own choices,” Betty says, and Ben knows how hard it is for her to say those words, especially now, “but you just make sure you’re smart and careful.”

“Always,” Ben swears, and even though this is the moment he’s been waiting for all his life, there’s a pit of dread in his stomach too.

Those dreads change when Betty drops Ben off at his apartment building with a kiss and a promise that they’ll see each other before Ben leaves.

Ben thinks vaguely that he needs to get the mail; his body on autopilot, he heads over to his mailbox and sees that there’s a thin package addressed to him with a typed card attached instead of handwriting, and no return address.

Ben frowns at it and opens it on his way up the stairs, tearing the envelope because patience has never been one of his strong suits.

He pulls out a notebook, not unlike the ones Ben uses to take extensive notes when he’s researching, but the green cover is flecked with dirt and grime.

Ben frowns, confused, as he gets into his apartment and carefully lays the notebook on his kitchen table, turning the light on so he can get a better look at it.

It’s clearly used and though it looked old at first glance, it’s mainly just roughed up. Ben recognizes the brand as one he could go and buy at the local Wal-Mart, so it can’t have been bought that long ago, all things considered.

He opens it gingerly to the first page and finds a full page of scrawled notes, the handwriting messy and small. However, as the owner of his own bad handwriting, Ben manages to make most of it out.

_Washington and Ontario – confirmed experiences_

_Eyewitness doesn’t count – anyone with physical evidence?_

_Possibly existed in South Dakota in the 1990s –rash of disappearances on western side of state_

_Appearances in wooded areas only – just best camouflage or is there a pattern? Greater reasoning? Consciousness behind the choices?_

A hand-drawn map of North America is scribbled beneath it with certain areas circled. Ben finds himself short of breath.

This is about the Void – it has to be. All of these notes correlate with how the Void works and the disappearances within it. Ben recognizes names of missing persons, found or still missing– Debbie Peterson in particular catches his eye immediately.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t you mention Jack Wright?” Ben mutters to the notebook as he leafs through, deciphering the notes as best he can. They get more and more scattered and disorganized the further he goes, until they start resembling diary entries instead.

_First day inside. Set up camp after hiking ~fourish hours. Darker than usual but haven’t filmed any shadows yet. Camera in good shape though, and recorder ready in case I need it. Got seven days rations, plenty of water. No phone reception so S isn’t happy.  Will give it a week and then get out, at least for a while, to compile research and then head back in._

The entries continue for more than seven days, though – they last at least fifteen, getting more and more panicked, and Ben’s breathless as he reads. Ben’s holding the goddamn notebook – surely whoever the writer was had escaped –

_Running out of ink. Can’t record much longer. No rations or water, but I don’t think that matters here. It’s not a real world. None of this is real – but it’s too real._

_If you find this I’m probably dead – I’ll hold onto it as long as I can, or else give it to someone I think has a better chance than me at making it out than me. Bodies  aren’t usually  found but since this isn’t reality I don’t know what that means – if I’m lost forever or if when I die inside here, my body won’t exist anymore._

_Hopefully this gets back in the world somehow. If you found this, whether it’s in here or out there – good luck. I think he wants it. The Shadowmaker._

_\- Jack Wright_

Ben isn’t sure what he stares at longer: _The Shadowmaker_ or _Jack Wright_. His brain is uncomprehending and numb with shock. On the one hand, what the fuck is the Shadowmaker? Who is it? Is it the monster? The monster who’s haunted Ben’s dreams all his life?

But on the other, possibly more important hand –

This is Jack Wright’s notebook. Ben Arnold is holding, in his own two shaking hands, Jack fucking Wright’s notebook. Ben breathes out and laughs without realizing it, even though there’s nothing funny about this.

How the hell had it gotten from the Void into Ben’s mailbox? Ben checks the envelope a dozen times, looking for clues, but there aren’t any. There’s not a return address, and Ben’s address is typed and not written so Ben can’t check the handwriting.

Ben thinks about giving it to Reagan, having her look and see if it’s genuine or someone’s playing a shitty joke, or if she can tell him how it got to him – how it got from Jack Wright, missing without a trace for three years, into Ben’s hands right now.

Then Ben realizes that there are more pages, but they’re the most incomprehensible of any. Ben has no idea what the fuck any of it means, only that it’s still in Jack’s handwriting, in barely there ink.

Ben reads the notebook cover to cover, over and over again all through the night, begging it for further answers. At the end of the night, the notebook is just an object.

It’s not Jack himself – Ben would die to get to talk to Jack Wright in person, and though this notebook shows Ben a peak into Jack’s life, Ben can’t ask it how it got here.

Or what happened to Jack.


	3. Chapter Two

Ben falls asleep almost the second he gets onto the plane, knocking himself out with sleeping aides well beforehand so he can at least doze for the first couple of hours of the six-hour flight to Fairbanks.

When he wakes up, he becomes slowly aware that he’s leaning on the shoulder of the guy sitting next to him. Ben immediately jolts away and toward the aisle with an embarrassed wipe at his face to make sure that he’s at least not drooling.

The guy notices, and turns to Ben with a grin instead of a scowl, and Ben’s shoulders droop in relief that at least he’s not an asshole.

“You alright there?” The guy laughs at him. Ben can tell even from their seated positions that the guy’s quite a bit taller than him, with long brown hair tied up messily at the top of his head.

“Sorry,” Ben says, trying not to blush. “I guess I just completely passed out.”

“A bit, yeah,” the guy laughs, but it’s not a mean laugh, which Ben appreciates in his embarrassment. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Thanks, and sorry again,” Ben says, and looks past the guy, who’s in the window seat, to peer out the window at the dusky sky. “How long have we been in the air?”

“About two hours,” the guy says, and Ben can hear the sigh in his voice. “Four more to go.”

“Ugh,” Ben makes a face and the guy laughs again. “I don’t like long flights.”

“From Washington, almost everywhere is long flight,” the guy points out and Ben nods, knowing all too well.

“You from Washington, too?” Ben asks the guy and he suddenly looks away like it’s a touchy subject.

“Uh, no,” the guy says, his voice remaining light. “I live in Denver, but I had to get a last minute flight, hence the connection. Still, Denver to Fairbanks would be way worse, so I suppose it’s a blessing in disguise.”

“I flew to DC last week and that’s six hours from Washington, too,” Ben shakes his head. “It’s bad regardless of direction! Anyway, I’m Ben.”

He sticks a hand out and the guy shakes it, looking both bemused and curious, and Ben’s worried that he’s annoyed the person he has to sit next to for the next four hours. He tends to do that.

“I’m Sammy,” he says and doesn’t seem too bothered except for when he furrows his brow and asks “Why were you in DC? Sorry, it’s just – _I_ was just in DC. That’s…coincidental.”

“Huh,” Ben says, and because he doesn’t believe in coincidence, adds “Uh, did you, by chance, meet with Dr. Emily Potter about –”

Sammy’s eyes widen in disbelief and he lets out a huff of a laugh that’s more shocked than anything. “I – yeah. Holy shit, yeah, I did. You’re –”

“Oh man, that’s so cool!” Ben brightens and immediately looks at Sammy in a new light. Ben doesn’t think he recognizes him from anywhere, but Ben’s not great with faces. “Are you a scientist? What’s your interest in the Void?”

Sammy shifts in his seat, his eyes not on Ben’s and looking slightly uncomfortable. “Oh, uh – I’m a journalist. I’m doing a story.”

“That’s great,” Ben says, meaning it. “The mainstream world needs to know more about these kinds of phenomena. They’re always so shunted to the side –”

“I don’t, uh,” Sammy interrupts, biting his lip, “I don’t necessarily believe in the veracity of the paranormal claims, but I’m interested in investigating them, seeing if there’s any logical explanation to be found.”

“Oh, so there’s a more logical explanation out there other than something paranormal?” Ben raises an eyebrow. “You know, when nothing else makes sense, sometimes Occam’s razor can point to something outside human perception.”

Sammy raises an eyebrow, but not in a condescending way, more in a curious and amused way. Ben’s not offended, is the point.

“Are you a scientist, then?” Sammy asks. “Immediate reference to Occam’s razor says yes, belief in the supernatural says hard no.”

“Well, uh, sort of,” Ben says, looking at his hands. “I’m a PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Washington, but claims of the paranormal are my specialty.”

Sammy squints at him. “What’s your last name? I feel like I might’ve read something by you.”

“Arnold,” Ben replies, and Sammy snaps his fingers, nodding. Ben feels himself start to melt a bit at the recognition.

“Yeah, yeah, a paper of yours – I don’t remember which paper or when this would’ve been,” Sammy says. “But I’ve definitely read something.”

“What’s your last name? Maybe I’ve read something of yours,” Ben says and Sammy shakes his head so quickly Ben’s almost surprised.

“Uh, Stevens, but I doubt you’ve read anything,” Sammy says. “I’m not a frequent visitor to the paranormal side of things. I’m….trying something new with this project.”

“Well, you must have had a convincing pitch to Emily to get on the team,” Ben says and Sammy smiles, seeming a little more comfortable.

“I guess so,” Sammy shrugs. “She seems like a competent leader for this. Do you know of anyone else who’ll be here?”

Ben shakes his head. “Dude, Emily called me like, two nights ago to tell me to book my plane ticket, and she seemed so frazzled that I didn’t even ask. Organizing this thing must be stressful as hell. But hey, we have all the proper permits, so it should be fine.”

“Yeah,” Sammy says, and his mouth twists into something between a smile and a grimace. “It should be.”

Ben ends up chatting with Sammy for most of the flight, and when they land and get their baggage, Ben suggests splitting a taxi to the research facility just outside of Fairbanks where Emily told them to arrive at. Sammy immediately agrees, a genuine smile on his face. Splitting the fare only makes sense, and besides, Ben really likes Sammy. He’s funny and has opinions, and Ben thinks he’s probably a great journalist who can do this story justice, even if he’s more skeptical than Ben about all of this.

“Dr. Potter is waiting upstairs,” the man who greets them at the entrance says once they arrive. “I think she wants to take off first thing in the morning to get the most light, but you can talk to her.”

“Smart,” Ben says under his breath and Sammy gives him a curious look. Ben doesn’t have time to explain before they’re whisked up to a laboratory on the top floor.

“Ben, Sammy!” Emily greets them both with a firm handshake when they meet in the hall. She hasn’t gotten any less pretty, though today she’s wearing a bulky sweater instead of a button-down. “I’m so glad you two have already met. Come on in and meet the team. You’re the last ones here.”

Ben and Sammy give each other a quick look in solidarity as they enter the lab. There are three others besides them and Emily, and two men and one woman and while two of them don’t look familiar, one of them _certainly_ does.

“Oh, look who it is, little Benny Arnold,” Pete Meyers’s taunting jab and usual shit-eating grin greet him. Ben’s fight of flight response is immediately activated as Pete leers at Ben overtop a stainless steel table. “I didn’t realize they let you leave your little rat hole office.”

“Pete,” Ben takes an involuntary step backward and into Sammy, who takes a hold of Ben’s elbow as if to hold him back. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“You two…know each other?” Emily asks, looking between them with a soft and concerned gaze. Ben doesn’t want to disappoint her, but seeing Pete is making Ben’s blood boil.

“We grew up together,” Ben says shortly, but Pete won’t let that sit.

“We have a well-known rivalry in the fields of paranormal study,” Pete said snidely, and the woman standing next to him makes a surprised noise. “You read my little aside for you in my last paper, Benny? _As paranormal apprentices like Ben Arnold wouldn’t know –”_

“Hey shut up, _guy_ , whoever you are,” Ben’s surprised to hear Sammy interrupt with a disgruntled look on his face as he looks Pete up and down. “We’re not here to throw jabs at each other.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I should’ve realized – I didn’t know you two had a, uh, rivalry,” Emily says biting her lip with a nervous look on her face. “But you’re both from King Falls and both have experience with the Void –”

“Pete?” Ben interrupts with a snort. “What experience?”

“Bitch, I lived there, I knew it was around,” Pete says and Emily grimaces the second Pete says _bitch._ “Just because all of us aren’t stupid enough to get ourselves snatched up –”

“Whoa, hold up,” Sammy interrupts, looking down at Ben with wide eyes. “Snatched up?”

“Were you really?” The woman Ben didn’t recognize says softly. She has dirty blonde hair, the only person here shorter than Ben, and there are circles under her eyes that don’t appear to be from traveling. “Sorry, it’s just – my husband –”

“Wait, what?” Sammy asks again, this time with even more confusion, and Emily clears her throat.

“Well, I was going to cover all of this in our introductions,” Emily says, casting both Ben and Pete apologetic looks. “This is Mary Jensen. She’s from Georgia and believes her husband Tim had an experience with the Void.”

“He’s not quite right anymore,” Mary explains to them all with wide eyes. “Wakes me up with screaming nightmares every night – _avoid the Void,_ he’ll say over and over again. I didn’t know what that meant ‘til I dug around and found the research on this – this _thing_ , whatever it is.”

Her eyes water up and she looks at the ground instead of any of them, and Ben feels a horrible feeling in his gut. From its position in his bag, Jack’s notebook suddenly feels heavier.

The man Ben doesn’t know who’s taller and broader than anyone else in the room by far, puts a comforting arm around Mary’s shoulder and she smiles up at him with affection.

“Oh, I’m alright, Ranger, you don’t need to –”

“I want to, and you call me Troy” the man says, and then turns to Sammy and Ben with a genial smile. “I can make my own introduction if you like, Miss Emily. I’m Troy Krieghauser, a forest ranger up in these parts. I know these woods like the back of my hand, so I’ll be makin’ sure you folks all stay safe and stay on the path.”

“Nice to meet you, Troy,” Sammy takes his hand, and then moves to shake Mary’s as well. With a quieter, gentler voice, he says “And you, Mary.”

Ben shakes both of their hands as well. “Good to know you’ll be with us, Ranger.”

“It’s Troy, remember?” Troy gives him a knowing grin, tipping his overlarge hat in Ben’s direction.

“Right, Troy is keeping us all safe,” Emily smiles brightly at Troy. “And then Pete Meyers and Ben Arnold are both experts in the paranormal – though I don’t know if I believe all of the claims of the supernatural aspects of the Void, there’s certainly something afoot here.”

“One of us is an expert,” Pete says, and Ben thinks about murdering him. “And one of us –”

 “Hey, Pete, how about we act like adults here?” Sammy says, and Ben’s surprised to find Sammy’s clenching his fist as he glares over at Pete. If Ben wasn’t sure from the airplane ride, he knows now for sure that Sammy’s basically his favorite person ever. It doesn’t take Ben long to warm up to people.

“Great idea,” Emily says, a warm smile in Sammy and Ben’s direction that Ben takes to mean he’s winning this contest against Pete. “And this is Sammy Stevens – he’s a journalist from Colorado who’s here to document our findings.”

“Nice to meet you all,” Sammy says. His eyes hit the ground, clearly uncomfortable with the attention. In solidarity, Ben steps a little closer to Sammy so everyone knows that they’re already a team of two and everyone else better get on board.  

Sammy grins at him, fleeting but Ben thinks he notices the gesture.

“So a quick break down of our week – we’re traveling up about fifty miles north toward the springs,” Emily says, gesturing for them all to look down at the map she has spread across the other table. Ben has to crane his neck to see properly. “Nancy Fletcher disappeared here, and we’re entering the same stretch of forest just from an opposite angle. Now, our objective isn’t to find her, that’s for the FBI – though if we do happen upon her, our other goals don’t matter anymore and we need to get her to safety immediately.”

“What makes the FBI think that her disappearance is connected to the Void?” Pete interrupts, voice high and obnoxious. Ben thinks about punching him for half a second before suppressing his rage. “Aren’t they the ones who raised the flag about this?”

Emily nods at Pete, but Ben thinks he sees a hint of frustration in her face. “Yes, the FBI said it fit the pattern of the other disappearances that Jack Wright’s research linked to the Void. As well as Jack’s disappearance itself. It’s a pattern, and this is our first opportunity to see if this Void really _does_ exist and if so, how it works.”

Emily breaks eye contact with Pete to address the group. “I’m there as a biologist, collecting data about what the forest is right now, if anything has changed from previous samplings, if there’s some sort of change in the ecosystem – plants, animals, anything. My goals are primarily scientific, and that’s how I’ll be leading this – purely as a fact-finding mission. Now, some of you might have different ideas about what a fact is, and I encourage you to do all the research you can while you’re there in any particular field, but I want to make it clear that we’re heading into a potentially dangerous situation, and we need to be a team here and stick together. No starting up coups or insurgencies. Alright?”

“Of course, Emily,” Troy says, patting her shoulder with a genial smile and Ben shoots Pete a guilty and furtive look that Pete returns with a grimace.

Mary and Sammy murmur agreement and Ben sighs and says “I’ll be nice if Pete is.”

Pete gives him a nasty grin. “I’m always nice.”

“Great,” Emily says, giving them both a long look that says they’d better be telling her the truth. Ben shifts from one foot to the other, feeling hot under her gaze.

Whatever. Pete is mainly harmless, and when Ben admits it to himself, they actually have a lot in common when it comes to their interests, academic and otherwise.  He’d rather hate Pete, but he can keep that on the down low.

“Our food and water supplies will last a week,” Emily says. “We’re hiking through this terrain here – it’s not a difficult hike, but we’ll be carrying packs so make sure you don’t take more than you can consistently carry for seven days. We leave at dawn tomorrow, so get a good night’s rest tonight at the hotel. Any questions?”

* * *

 

Ben has never been good at quelling his impulses, which is why he decided with complete certainty to knock on Sammy’s hotel room door.

They checked in at the same time, it’s three doors down from Ben’s, it’s not that weird.

Ben has to knock a second time, but Sammy opens the door immediately after that. His messy hair is out of its bun in messy and tangled knots that reach his shoulders. He blinks, clearly a little surprised to see Ben.

“Hey,” Ben says, grinning up at him. “Not to be awkward as hell, but like – do you want to get a drink or something? Or not a drink, that might not be a good idea but – food? Sorry, I’m nervous about tomorrow and can’t sleep, and I also ramble when I’m nervous if you couldn’t tell –”

“Ben,” Sammy interrupts and Ben’s pleased to see he’s smiling back. “Just let me put on a sweatshirt, yeah? I think the hotel bar has appetizers.”

Be smiles to himself as he waits for Sammy, pleased that he has a buddy on this expedition. It would be a little lonely otherwise, he thinks. Not to mention a little scary.  

The hotel Emily put them in is pretty swanky, especially for Alaskan standards. Or so Ben assumes. He’s never actually been to Alaska before now. The bar isn’t busy so he and Sammy get a nice comfy couch that Ben immediately sinks into as Sammy orders them something with chicken.

“So why are you here if you don’t believe in any of this stuff?” Ben blurts out because he can’t help himself but it’s been a question he’s wanted to ask since the plane ride.

Sammy cocks his head, looking contemplative. “Just because I don’t believe in the paranormal doesn’t mean there isn’t something odd going on in the woods. And besides – it’s a good story. I’m not here to prove or disprove anything, just to find out what the story is.”

“I guess that’s the good thing about journalism,” Ben says a little wistfully. “In science, it’s all about proof. I wish it were more about story.”

“It’s not so different,” Sammy says, voice growing more contemplative. “I mean – yeah, it’s different in how the world views it, but how you go about it is the same. You look for something. You see what you find. You create a narrative around it. Science claims that its objective, but it’s not. Everything has a point of view, a plot, some characters – it’s all story.”

Sammy’s blushing and not quite looking at Ben, but Ben thinks he’s never heard anything sound cooler in his life.

“You’re really smart,” Ben tells him, which makes Sammy’s pink face turn red. “I see why Emily picked you. I’m sure you weren’t the only journalist interested in covering this.”

“Probably not,” Sammy agrees, and takes a sip of his water that the waiter delivered when they got here. “So what’s the deal with you and Pete?”

“Ugh,” Ben says, scrunching in closer on himself involuntarily. “I hate Pete fucking Meyers.”

Sammy laughs out loud, so quick he looks like the sound startled him. “Tell me how you really feel.”

“We grew up together, same grade in school,” Ben says, pulling his shoulders in tighter. “Always made fun of me for being short. And having glasses. And almost dying in Perdition Wood.”

“What the hell?” Sammy raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “Why would anyone –”

“Because Pete’s a dick and he hated me and the fact that I got better grades than him,” Ben explains. “I was so, so mad when he specialized in parapsychology, too. I genuinely think he did it to spite me!”

“Well, spite’s a powerful motivator, maybe he did you a favor,” Sammy laughs and Ben grouches out an agreement. He knows it’s probably true, because he and Pete are both petty as hell. “You’re both adding to the field. A really small field. And if it makes you feel any better, I’ve definitely read your paper, and definitely _haven’t r_ ead his.”

“That does make me feel better,” Ben admits, then narrows his eyes at Sammy. “Hold on. Are you making that up _just_ to make me feel better?”

“I’d never,” Sammy vows with the corners of his mouth turned up.

The waiter comes and delivers chicken wings, which Ben gladly devours. Sammy eats slowly, picking at the food a little.

“Are you scared?” Sammy asks after a few moments of silence. “I mean – I’d say you’d have more of a reason to be afraid than anyone else, except maybe for Mary. But you’re the only person who might’ve actually _been_ there before.”

“I was there, I know it,” Ben corrects him, and nausea bubbles up so quickly Ben can barely prepare for it. He coughs a few times before he responds. “I, uh – I’m terrified, honestly. But I’ve been waiting for a chance to go back ever since. To try and understand it. Understand what happened to me.”

“What happened?” Sammy asks softly, then bites his lip. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me. But like Emily said – we’re a team.”

“No, I can tell you,” Ben says, almost thrilled at the prospect of someone genuinely wanting to know. “I don’t remember much, though. Mainly just the before and after, and no matter how hard I try to put the pieces in the middle together, they never quite fit.”

Ben explains, with halting words, about the hike, the voice in his head, the shadows closing around him, the endless cold numbing his bones. Sammy stares at him the whole time with wide and sympathetic eyes.

“And then someone saved me,” Ben says, biting his lip. “I don’t know who. Or how. But I remember someone being there –and then I remember being in the ambulance, and three weeks had passed but it didn’t feel like that to me.”

“Was it the police? A sheriff?” Sammy asks and Ben shakes his head.

“I don’t think so,” Ben says. “I have no idea who it was. I mean, I didn’t imagine it. It’s the only clarity I really have.”

“Well, hopefully your guardian angel figures out how to make a reappearance if things go south this week,” Sammy says and Ben shakes his head.

“Don’t say that,” Ben says firmly. “Things are gonna work out fine. And hopefully we’ll find Nancy Fletcher while we’re at it.”

“Yeah,” Sammy almost whispers, a grimace on his face. “Maybe.”

Ben thinks about telling him about Jack’s notebook, stashed up in his bedroom in his backpack, but something stops him. He doesn’t understand the notebook yet, doesn’t understand how it’s connected, only that it is.

Besides, Jack had written that the _Shadowmaker_ , whatever that was, wanted the notebook. Ben figured it was best to keep that quiet for now. It would probably be a mistake to even bring the notebook with him, but Ben figures that maybe once he’s inside, Jack’s notebook might prove useful. A bartering tool with the Shadowmaker if nothing else.

So he doesn’t mention it to Sammy. Instead, he orders another plate of appetizers and keeps talking to Sammy until it’s undeniable that they need to sleep for tomorrow. Ben spends the night restless, thinking of every line of Jack’s notebook and what they could all mean.


	4. Chapter Three

Ben doesn’t bring much in his pack other than his rations, knowing he can’t carry much. One change of clothes, an extra hat, gloves, and scarf, his sleeping bag, and Jack’s notebook buried underneath everything else. 

He’s wearing two coats, but it’s too hot to wear the bulkier one in the car on the drive up, leaving Ben just wearing his red and black checkered jacket that he’s had ever since he woke up wrapped around it when he was twelve years old.

It feels right, taking it back to where it belongs, Ben thinks as he pulls it around himself tightly, the sleeves well past his fingertips even after all these years.

“Morning, Benny,” Emily greets him as he gets into the backseat of the Ford Ranger with Troy at the wheel. Ben knows perfectly well as the shortest person in all rooms that he’s expected to go as far back in cars as he can get.

Thankfully, Sammy swings into the car next and sits next to him even though he has to hug his knees to his chest in the back. He looks a little out of place in a blue, bulky winter coat. He gives Ben an odd look when he sees him.

“Morning,” Ben greets him. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Sammy says, though he’s still frowning. “That coat is huge on you.”

“All the warmer, my friend,” Ben says. “You look plenty warm already.”

Sammy frowns, flipping his hood up so his face is almost entirely shrouded. “I’m freezing and we’re not even out in the woods yet. And the car is heated.”

“Thankfully, _I’m_ an avid outdoorsman,” Pete climbs into the car next and Ben glares at him. Pete glares right back. “What’s up, Benny?”

“It’s Ben,” Ben corrects automatically with probably more venom than necessary, and feels Sammy’s shoulder bump against his own. 

Mary’s the last one in, and she gives Ben an apologetic smile and pat on the arm as she greets him that Ben appreciates.

There isn’t a lot of talking on the way up other than Emily giving them general instructions about the terrain and plan of action when they arrive, and Troy explaining that the Forest Service will pick up their vehicle from the forest path’s entrance and will send someone pick them up on the other side of the wooded area at the end of their designated hike time.

“Mary, your husband knows that he can’t contact you?” Emily suddenly breaks from her spiel about how cell phone usage won’t be available anywhere or anytime regardless of whether the Void exists or not.

“I think so,” Mary says, her voice strained and quiet. “He has a bit of trouble grasping things right now. But his mother is staying with him and the kids this week and she knows what’s going on, even if she don’t fully agree with what I’m doing. She thinks I’m playing into his delusions.”

“Georgia,” Sammy says quietly. “Are there any other stories about the Void in Georgia?”

“No,” Mary says, and Ben can see her lip trembling. “I don’t think so. Just Tim’s. And he – he was only gone for a week, I thought –”

Mary lapses into miserable silence, and Ben is about to reach out but Sammy beats him to it, touching Mary’s shoulder.

“It’ll be alright,” Sammy says, gentle in a way that Ben is a little surprised by. Not that Sammy hasn’t been anything but nice since they met, but there’s something different about his voice now. “Maybe you’ll find some answers here, yeah? And even if you don’t, it’s better to have tried.”

Mary sniffles, but she pats Sammy’s hand all the same. “Thanks, Sammy. I appreciate it.”

They lapse into silence after that, and when Emily resumes her instructions, it’s with a quieter and more subdued tone of voice.

They park in a tiny gravel lot next to a sign that says _Beauregard Trail_ on a dilapidated sign, and Troy turns the ignition off with a long sigh.

“We’re here, folks,” Troy says. “Nancy Fletcher disappeared from her parents’ car about a mile north of here. Secluded, wooded area sequestered from almost all else – just like it says in Jack Wright’s book.”

Ben shifts uncomfortably, all too aware of the notebook in his backpack.

“Get your bags out of the trunk and follow me,” Troy says and Ben’s all too happy to follow his lead.

They start their hike with Troy leading the five of them, narrating the woods around them like a nature guide – and Ben supposes that’s generally what his job is when he isn’t escorting a team into a possibly paranormal nightmare realm.

Mary keeps pace with Troy up at the front, despite the fact that Troy’s by far the tallest of their party. Mary also seems to be the most attentive listener to his ramblings about the native history of the area.

Pete and Emily follow behind, and Ben thinks about barging up there to interrupt the conversation – Emily is far too nice and pretty to have to deal with Pete Meyers – but Ben feels like he’s not needed when he hears Emily say “Pete, please, I’m trying to concentrate.”

It makes Ben feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

He and Sammy bring up the back, and it becomes clear that they’re the most inexperienced hikers here rather quickly. Whatever. Ben hiked all the time when he was a kid – well, at least until he was twelve, after which he never went hiking again. He knows the theory behind it at the very least.

“Don’t they have mountains in Colorado?” Ben asks Sammy. “Do you ever climb those?”

Sammy shoots him a half-glare that Ben doesn’t take at all seriously. “Not if I can help it.”

“So why Colorado?” Ben asks. “Are you from there originally, or is Denver just a great city for journalism?”

Sammy shrugs, a grimace on his face, though Ben thinks it’s from the hiking and not Ben’s questions. “Denver’s as good as any other place. And no, I – I’ve moved around a bit over the years. You can write from pretty much anywhere, so….”

“Fair point,” Ben says, and Emily turns around slightly with a smile at Sammy.

“I read your article on sexual assault allegations against professors being ignored on university campuses,” Emily says, her eyes bright and assessing. “I thought it was very well done. Respectful – which you don’t see often with sexual assault coverage.”

“Thanks,” Sammy says, and Ben can tell from the way his eyes soften that the compliment means something to him. “I worked really hard on that – took up most of the last year of my life.”

“Got another year on this one?” Emily asks and Sammy shrugs.

“We’ll see when I get out my audio recorder,” Sammy says, gesturing toward his coat pocket. “I figure I’ll get plenty of recordings of us walking from later on so I won’t record now – I was recording your instructions in the car, just in case anyone needs a refresher later on.”

“You turning this into a podcast, Stevens?” Pete turns around with a snide look on his face that Ben wants to punch off. “I hear that’s the thing to do now.”

Sammy wrinkles up his nose. “Uh, no. Ew. I just want to remember everything for when I write my print piece. I don’t really…. _do_ podcasts.”

“I love podcasts,” Ben says, elbowing Sammy, though through their several layers of clothes, he doubts Sammy can even feel more than a nudge. “Wild Thing is amazing if you’re into paranormal stuff. And Jack Wright’s sister Lily does Wright On! I mean, it has nothing to do with her brother’s research, but she’s such a phenomenal journalist in her own right.”

Sammy goes quiet after that, especially after Mary chimes in a comment about the only podcast she listens to, My Favorite Murder, which leads to a long discussion between Emily and Mary about why true crime podcasts appeal to women.

“You good?” Ben asks Sammy quietly. Sammy nods, though he’s turned away. With his hood up, it’s hard for Ben to fully see his face.

When they stop for a break a couple hours in, Emily squints up at the sun in the sky. “I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary so far, but then again, we’re not really in the thick of the trees yet. I wasn’t really expecting anything on Day One anyway, but I figure we hike until the sun goes down and then set up camp for the night. No reason to hike in the dark if we don’t have to, yeah?”

Ben nods in assent, and the rest of the team does the same.

Troy gestures back in the direction of the path. “We’ve got about three miles until there’s a known spot for campers – obviously cleared out right now because of Nancy Fletcher, but no reason we can’t use tonight.”

Sammy sighs as they stand, and Ben brushes shoulders with him purposefully as they match their pace with one another’s.

“You not cut out for this life, Stevens?” Pete jabs at him and Ben resists the urge to trip him.

Emily, bless her heart, says “Pete! Cut it out! We’re a team, remember?”

Pete smirks at both Sammy and Ben in turn as he speeds up his pace on purpose to be even with Troy.

“He seemed nicer when I interviewed him,” Emily says, almost entirely under her breath with an apologetic look at Ben. “Sorry, Benny.”

“It’s fine,” Ben reassures her as she turns to Mary to help her to her feet.

“You know what I noticed?” Sammy asks Ben as they resume their position in the back of the group. Ben hums in answer. “That you look like you’re going to fight Pete to the death every time he calls you Benny – but you look like you might melt on the spot when Emily does.”

“Shut up,” Ben says, finding himself blushing and hoping the cold weather will hide that from being conspicuous should Emily turn around. “She’s pretty! And nice! She gets a free pass. She hasn’t hurt me like Pete has. Yet.”

Sammy just laughs at him.

Camping was never Ben’s favorite thing to do, but he almost feels like a kid again when the six of them pull their sleeping bags around a crackling fire that Troy graciously set up for them.

Sammy seems happiest with the new warmth, and looks far more comfortable now than Ben’s seen him today as he curls his shoulders together and lit’s his hands to warm them on the outside of the ring of smoke. 

“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Emily says as they eat their dinner, primarily compromised of saltines and salami. “I mean, that nothing odd has happened. It feels just like an ordinary hike.”

“Well, Stevens and Arnold don’t know what an ordinary hike is…” Pete trails off.

“Oh, shut up,” Mary rolls her eyes at Pete and turns back to Emily. “You’re right. Everything feels too ordinary.”

“We’re probably just not deep enough in yet,” Ben points out.

“Or the Void doesn’t exist,” Sammy adds unhelpfully. He has his recorder out now taping their conversation, which Ben thinks is more than a little exciting. He almost hopes that something happens right now just so Sammy’s sure to catch it on his audio file.

“It could be a lot of reasons at this point,” Troy says. Ben’s quickly learned that Troy is the most level-headed person here, and certainly the peacekeeper of any argument that’s going to break out. “We’ll just keep going tomorrow and see what we see.”

Ben can’t deny that he’s a little bothered by a lack of excitement, and decides to dedicate his day tomorrow to searching for oddities, regardless of how small.

He doesn’t have to wait long. When everyone goes to sleep that night, Ben hesitantly pulls out Jack’s notebook along with his flashlight, burying his small frame in his sleeping bag to read through again, searching for anything to make sense now that Ben’s actually here.

When he flips to the last pages of the notebook, the most obscure and unreadable, they’re entirely blank.

It isn’t that the pages have been ripped out or stolen – the pages are just blank with no ink, no scribbles, just _nothing_ , like the pages hadn’t been there in the first place.

Ben knows he didn’t imagine them – the notebook’s pages are numbered with Jack’s shaky writing and Ben knew that eighty-seven pages had been filled up when he’d read the notebook through last night. Now, only eighty-four pages are still there.

Jack’s final sendoff is still there, and as far as Ben can tell, so is everything before it. Jack’s last unintelligible scrawls are gone though.

It’s like they never existed.


	5. Chapter Four

Ben wakes up with a crick in his neck to some stray beams of light coming through the tent.

Ben blinks a few times to get the sleep out of his eyes, looking around at the tent. He, Sammy, Troy, and Pete are sharing the bigger of the two, with Ben on the far side and Sammy separating Ben and Pete.

Sammy had forcibly put himself between Ben and Pete when they set up for the night with a knowing look at Ben. Ben supposed he was grateful. 

It looks like he’s the first up – Troy’s as still as can be and Pete’s obnoxiously snoring, which makes Ben glare at him as he sits up, even though he knows Pete can’t see him.

Sammy, from next to him, is breathing slowly, his mouth half-open. He looks much younger when he’s asleep, his face almost entirely relaxed.

Ben tries to be as quiet as can be as he unzips the tent and is careful to not step on Sammy’s feet as he gets out. Luckily, he’s small and agile, so it’s not too much trouble.

Dawn is breaking in the sky above them, and Ben lets out a sigh of relief at the strands of light getting brighter and brighter. He looks over at the smaller of the two tents that Emily and Mary are sharing, and it doesn’t seem to be disturbed. Ben’s always been an early riser.

He sits next to the remnants of last night’s fire, the air around him still and calm. It’s cold, a chilly breeze rippling through the woods, but it's more brisk than anything else. It feels more like Washington than Alaska, that’s for certain.

It doesn’t feel like a place Ben could freeze to death.

A sudden chill runs down Ben’s spine at that thought and he jolts upward, looking wildly around.

It feels like something is watching him, something lurking on the outer rim of trees surrounding them, but he has to be imagining that. Nothing is different. Not the woods now, not the woods in general. Their hike yesterday was typical for this terrain and time of year. The only thing Emily had remarked on yesterday was a lack of wildlife nearby, but they saw birds flying above them at the very least.

There’s nothing conspicuous in the woods, nothing at all. They’re just trees.

Still, Ben cautiously creeps out of the campsite to look down the trail, the forest so dense that he can’t quite see all the way there from around the ring of smoke and ash. The path looks darker than the clearing they camped in, but there’s a logical explanation for that – it’s narrower, with more brush above Ben’s head.

That’s when Ben sees a carving on a tree directly across from him, and has to do a double take to make sure he's not imagining it in his paranoia.

It's real, though, and Ben takes a tentative step toward the tree. It appears as though someone’s taken an Exacto knife and painstakingly sliced something into the trunk, just slightly above Ben’s head. Ben can't quite make it out from the campsite.

Ben glances back at the quiet tents behind him and reassures himself that someone will hear him if he screams.

Ben steps out to the trail toward the tree with baited breath. He makes it to the tree in three quick strides, and lifts a shaking hand to brush away the branch of needles in front of the carving to get a better look.

The tree has a number carved into its base, shaky and not precise but still easy to make out: _85._

Ben’s first thought is a stupid one. The missing pages of Jack’s notebook. There’s no more page eighty-five. His second one is more realistic and concrete – when Troy wakes up, Ben should ask him if there’s ever a reason that someone would’ve marked a tree like that. Maybe it was marked to be cut down by the Forest Service or something typical and ordinary and unrelated to the notebook.

Still, no one is awake yet. Ben can check the notebook before he wakes up Troy with his question. Nothing wrong with that. It’s probably nothing but –

Ben’s heart is in his chest as he hurriedly crawls back into the tent, but luckily his three compatriots are still fast asleep. Sammy seems to be stirring the more light gets into the tent from the rising sun, his eyelids fluttering, but he's still unconscious as far as Ben can tell. 

Ben digs into his pack and gingerly pulls out Jack’s notebook, taking care to smooth the pages over as he flips to the final pages. The rest is still there – the notes, the journal entries, Jack’s farewell message –

And just below where Jack’s scrawled _85,_ ink glistens like it’s brand new.

_Black lightning is coming_

Ben stares at the words – he remembers it, from before, he remembers reading it in his kitchen and having no context whatsoever, thinking it was maybe Jack’s last desperate attempts to record something about what had happened to him. 

Now though, Ben feels like they’re not just words, and they're not about Jack. They’re a message. A message for Ben. 

The realization strikes him with electric excitement mingled with fear and foreboding. 

And then the lights go out.

Ben doesn’t know how else to explain to himself as his heart beats out of his chest, the tent suddenly darkened around him. It’s like someone flipped a switch on the sun. Whereas two seconds ago, the sun had been steadily rising in the sky above their heads, lightening up the world around them by the second, that was no longer the case.

Everything - the tent, the woods, the _world_ - everything was dark.

Not pitch black – Ben could still make out shapes, could squint down and see the words Jack had written. It reminded him of black light, the kind Ben associated with the mini-golf place he hung out at as kid.

Maybe – maybe like black light _ning_.

“What the fuck is happening?”

Ben isn’t sure if he’s relieved or more stressed out when Sammy suddenly bolts up, looking wildly around at the dim blackness surrounding them. He shoves Jack’s notebook back in his pack, moving to lace up his hiking boots instead.

“I don’t know,” Ben says, his voice coming out calmer than he feels. His hands shake as he ties his shoes, and tries to focus on making his hands do what they're supposed to so he won't freak out. He hears Troy and Pete begin to stir as well. “I was just out there – it was fine, it was ordinary, the sun was coming up.”

“It’s almost eight in the morning,” Troy says as he checks his watch and pulls on another sweater. There’s no traces of sleep in his voice. “March near Fairbanks – sun _should_ be risin’ pretty steady.”

“It’s not even dark, though,” Sammy says, squinting up. “I mean – not _really_ dark. It’s more like a – a filter?”

“Let’s get out there and see what’s up, then,” Pete says like it should be obvious, and Ben can easily make out Pete’s eye roll right at Sammy. Ben feels his hackles rise defensively but he quells the urge to bite something back.

“Get all of your stuff,” Troy says, his voice more serious than jovial for the first time. “Want to make sure there’s nothing – y’know – _out_ there.”

Ben and Sammy trade a nervous look, but they all do as Troy says, even Pete.

“What’s going on?” Emily asks when the guys all emerge from their tent. She’s standing in front of her own tent, looking wary but alert, and already has her backpack on like she’s ready to trek onward. Behind her, Mary looks far more nervous and paranoid with her lip shaking as she glances around the darkened woods. “Did anyone see what happened?”

“I was out here like five minutes ago, and it was light,” Ben explains to her when the others look to him to respond, “but I was back in the tent when the lights…went out.”

“They can’t _go out_ ,” Sammy says, but Ben can hear his voice waver with doubt. “I mean, the sun doesn’t run on electricity, it’s a constant. Alaska’s sun is weird though, isn’t it? Could it get dark unexpectedly like this?”

Troy shakes his head. “Alaska’s not that weird, bud. The sun just doesn’t suddenly stop risin’.”

“Black lightning,” Ben whispers to himself and Emily gives him a curious look, but doesn’t press.

“I’m getting my audio recorder started,” Sammy says, reaching into his pocket.

“Can everyone get the tents packed up?” Emily asks, biting her lip. “I’m going to take a sample of the soil – I took one on our break yesterday, but....everything looks different now.”

“This is _light_ , not soil,” Pete says and Ben could punch him.

“It’s not just the light,” Ben says bitingly at Pete before the implications of that fully sink in. As they do, his heart starts beating faster. “We’re noticing the light, but it’s not just that. Right, Emily?”

Emily nods, and the proud look she gives Ben reminds him of the rush he feels when a girl pays attention to him, but also the rush of a professor saying he had a good question. They’re very similar feelings, as far as Ben’s concerned.

“The soil’s almost…green,” Emily says, kneeling down to run the dirt between her fingers. “And look at the ash from the fire last night – it looks like it’s sizzling.”

“You’re right,” Ben kneels down next to her to get a better look at the ash. It’s almost alive, the way it shimmers and nearly jumps up in the darkened world.

“It’s like everything’s either muted or stands out all the more,” Emily frowns, and she busies herself with taking a sample of both the soil and the ash. She holds a vial out to Ben that Ben holds for her immediately.

By the time Emily’s gotten what she needs, Troy has the tents packed in his overlarge backpack. Ben would offer to carry the smaller one for him but he thinks he might tip over if that were the case, and Troy barely broke a sweat yesterday.

“Let’s…let’s walk,” Emily says as if she’s decided just now, but her voice leaves no room for worry or doubt. “There hasn’t been anything dangerous yet, just some, well, _oddities_. We’ll keep hiking. And get our flashlights out.”

“We don’t really need them,” Pete mutters under his breath and Ben glares even though he’s right.

“Just in case,” Emily says, glaring at Pete herself. That makes Ben feel better. “Safety first here. And let’s stick close together.”

They head down the trail in similar formation to yesterday, Ben falling into step with Sammy easily behind everyone else. He has a pained look on his face, his lips pursed and his eyes downcast.

“You alright?” Ben asks quietly so that the others can’t hear, and Sammy only nods in response.

“Little freaked out,” Sammy admits, and Ben bumps him with his hip.

“We’ll make a believer of you yet,” Ben says which makes Sammy crack a bit of a smile. That makes Ben feel better, too.

“Shh,” Emily says suddenly from where she’s leading the group, stopping short. Everyone follows her lead, and Ben feels his muscles tighten. “Quiet. Does anyone else hear that?”

There’s a rustling somewhere in the trees, Ben thinks it's somewhere to their left. It keeps moving, growing, changing. It’s not loud, but in this darkened world it makes Ben feel cold and clammy.

“Just wind,” Sammy whispers, but his voice is leaking with uncertainty, and Ben feels himself grab Sammy’s wrist without realizing it.

“No,” Ben whispers. Suddenly, he finds it hard to swallow. “Hasn’t anyone else noticed – there’s no wind anymore?”

Five pairs of eyes turn to him with confusion, then shock, then a horrified acceptance when they realize what Ben's just put together in his head. 

“There’s no wind, the air is – the air is _stale_ ,” Ben holds a shaking hand out into the air and lets it hang there. “No sun, no wind - no _weather_. Is it…is it even cold?”

Ben reaches up to take his hat off. His ears don’t even sting.

“No weather,” Troy echoes Ben’s shock with a shaky voice. “How the hell –”

“Aliens,” Pete says like it’s confirmed and Ben stifles a groan.

“Shut up, not everything is aliens,” Ben tries his best not to sound like a five year old. 

“How else do you explain that this is like another world?”

“Because it’s the Void,” Emily says, her voice strangely calm, but her eyes reveal more panic than she’s letting on as she looks at Ben. “Everyone stay very quiet until we know what’s going on. Should we go back to the campsite? Or go ahead?”

“This is what we came here for,” Mary says, startling clear and determined, and the only one of them that doesn’t seem to have any doubt. “Tim said that everything stayed still in the Void. This feels _still_.”

“Let’s go, then,” Emily nods to Troy to lead them. “ _Quietly_. So we can hear if anything –”

She doesn’t finish her sentence. They all start moving again anyway, shuffling closer together. Ben realizes that his hand is still clasped around Sammy’s wrist, and he pulls it back with an apologetic look. Sammy smiles at him, softer than Ben expected. Ben doesn't grab his wrist again, but he brushes shoulders with Sammy purposefully as they walk. 

It's not like the others aren't doing the same - they all move as a pack, not unlike penguins except they’re all facing forward. Ben finds himself holding Mary’s hand at one point, tight enough to break fingers.

“Ben,” Sammy speaks a few minutes later. He gets a few shushes from others but he keeps talking. “Do you remember anything like this from when you were a kid?”

“I don’t know,” Ben whispers back. “It’s not very clear, never has been. But I don’t remember there being no weather – I remember _cold_.”

“That doesn’t follow any scientific logic,” Emily says from in front of him. She’s not defensive; it’s more like she’s coming to a slow realization. “There’s nothing that says that can’t follow a – a _paranormal_ logic, though.”

“There’s got to be an explanation,” Sammy says, almost to himself.

Ben is about to reply with something snarky to distract himself from the panic in his chest threatening to overwhelm him when suddenly he hears a quick snapping sound.

“What –?” Ben looks at the ground, and sees Pete standing over a small branch that his foot snapped in half.

“Sorry,” Pete whispers, not meaning it. “Didn’t see that there.”

“Watch out –” Emily starts, but she’s cut off by a noise behind them. A slow rumble sounds like it’s coming almost from the sky where the sun’s missing, something resembling –

“Is that…thunder?” Sammy half-turns behind him with a curious look on his face, and Ben follows his lead.

Ben's heart stops short, and he gasps for a breath that doesn’t come. 

The world behind them isn't a world anymore. It's just darkness. Pure, complete, utter, endless darkness. Not a muted world, not a filter, not black light. A darkness so black Ben can feel it pulling at him, threatening to swallow him whole. 

The darkness moves toward them like a slow rolling monster, but the slowness doesn't make it any less terrifying. It's like the darkness is biding its time, like it knows it will consume them eventually if it just keeps moving, it's like a villain in a Wild West movie, and fuck, Ben needs to move, he forces himself to turn to Sammy whose mouth has fallen open in shock and horror –

Then there’s a shot.

Not a gunshot, though it sounds like one. It sounds far more like a gunshot than a crack of lightning, but that’s when the connection hits Ben with staggering force far greater than this darkness.

“Black lightning,” Ben gazes upward, then and then terrified over to Sammy, who has wide, glassy eyes as he stares, frozen in place. “Everyone, get down!”

Sammy raises his eyebrow as if he’s about to ask a skeptical, cynical question, but Ben doesn’t give him the chance. Ben gives one last horrified glance at the lightning bolt of darkness descending upon them, and then shoves Sammy to the ground.

For a second, he’s afraid his weight won’t be enough, but then Sammy topples and Ben lands on his chest. Ben can’t even turn to see if the others listened and ducked, terror racing through his entire body as he buries his face in Sammy’s jacket and squeezes his eyes shut, begging the world around him to keep everyone safe.

Well, maybe not the world around him. He has a sneaking suspicion that this isn’t the world he knows anymore.

It feels like an earthquake when the lightning strikes, rocking the very foundation of the ground beneath them. Ben feels Sammy grab at the back of his coat to keep them from getting pulled apart, and Ben holds onto his shoulders as best he can.

As the world shakes around them, Ben hears a voice, crystal clear, and thundering worse than the sky above them. Or maybe the voice is the sky. All Ben knows is that it sounds human but distinct, godlike and powerful above but also a whisper in his ear.

_No way out now. Bring it to me._

Ben squeezes his eyes shut. The passage from Jack’s farewell sears in his mind with equal terror and fervor.  _I think he wants it. The Shadowmaker._


	6. Chapter Five

“The Shadowmaker,” Sammy repeats, voice carefully neutral as Ben tells him about the voice he heard. “I didn’t hear anything, Ben. And what the fuck does _Shadowmaker_ mean? Is that like a common term, when people talk about the Void? I mean, is it coined by anyone?”

Sammy's neutrality slips just slightly, his panicked eyes giving him away along with the slightest waver in his voice. Ben doesn't blame him. Panic is everywhere around them.

After they all survived the darkness bearing down, the world returned to its black light reality. Ben is relieved and disturbed to find the backlit world almost ordinary now. Still, everyone had been extremely shaken up, and Emily had tremblingly suggested they all turn and head back to their initial campsite.

But the campsite hadn't been there anymore. They’d turned around and couldn’t find it.

“It’s like the woods rearranged themselves,” Troy had whispered, almost to himself, his lip quivering. “I – I been in these woods since I was a munchkin, but they’re different now. The trail isn’t the trail anymore.”

Troy sank down in shock with his head between his knees and Emily wisely chose to just sit down next to him and rest her head on his shoulder and murmur something about taking a break. 

Sammy and Ben had leaned against a broad oak together, and Ben had asked Sammy if he’d heard what Ben had.

He hadn’t. No one had heard the voice but Ben.

“I think I just read it somewhere,” Ben says hastily in response to Sammy’s question, not quite ready to tell anyone about Jack’s notebook yet.

Ben's feeling a bit guilty over that. Yes, they are a team, and if Ben is putting them in danger by having the notebook with him, he needs to disclose that information. Still, as it stands now, the Shadowmaker seems to know that it’s Ben and only Ben keeping Jack’s notebook from him. His message had been to Ben alone, and Ben doesn't know if he’d just endanger his friends even more if he let them in on the secret.

So until Ben gets more information – hell, _any_ information at all – he’s going to keep his mouth shut and see what happens.

“You’re sure you didn’t hear anything? Anything resembling a human voice?” Ben tries again. He wants to tell Sammy especially. He feels so close to him despite only knowing him for a few days. It’s something about his unexpectedly gentle demeanor and the clear affection he has when he laughs at Ben.

Sammy’s eyes are just as gentle now as he shakes his head. “I didn’t hear anything, Ben. What did the voice say?”

“That we can’t go back,” Ben almost whispers, hugging his knees to his chest. He feels Sammy put a hand on his shoulder and sigh, long and more than a little miserable.

“This can’t be easy for you,” Sammy says after a second's thought, sounding so understanding. “Or for your family, I’m sure.”

“My mom probably won’t sleep at all this week,” Ben says, and a new wave of guilt washes over him at putting his mom through this for a second time, and this time on purpose. “Or ever again, if I don’t make it back.”

“You’ll make it back,” Sammy says, a clear promise. Ben doesn’t even hear a bit of uncertainty in his voice. He smiles at Sammy, who smiles back, tentative but kind, before he breaks eye contact to look at the black dirt of the ground beneath him, picking at it with his hands. Nervous habit, maybe. Ben understands.

“So, uh, what’s King Falls like?” Sammy asks after a moment. 

“Best place on earth,” Ben says automatically as he shifts to rest his elbows on his knees and his head on his elbows, leaning in Sammy’s direction. Sammy half-smiles at the response. “We’ve been voted Best Small Town in America seven years running by the King Falls Chamber of Commerce.”

“Probably not much of a contest if your own town is the one voting on it,” Sammy says with a short but bright laugh.

“You always live in big cities?” Ben asks and Sammy looks away for half a second but he meets Ben’s eyes again.

“Yeah,” Sammy says, “pretty much. Never really saw the point in small town living. I’m sure your town is cut from a finer cloth than most, though.”

“You can visit if we make it through this,” Ben says and Sammy goes a little pink but the affection doesn’t leave his face. “We have a lot of paranormal phenomena for you to debunk.”

“Hey, I don’t debunk,” Sammy says with mock offense. “I just tell stories, and try to make them true ones.”

“What are you gonna tell about this one?” Ben asks, gesturing toward Sammy’s recorder. Ben’s not sure if it’s running or not, and finds he doesn’t really care too much. Documentation is the furthest thing from his mind. 

“Can’t have a story without an ending,” Sammy grimaces, and Ben knows that they can both feel the same quiet dread that’s humming in the air around them.

“Guys?” Emily says a few moments later, when Sammy and Ben are half-heartedly bickering about whether the Void is where Bigfoot vacations over the summer. “Where’s Pete?”

Ben frowns, glancing around them to see that Pete was indeed not in the immediate proximity. “Did he say he was going somewhere?”

“No, I would never let him go off alone,” Emily says as she stands, a worried crease appearing in her forehead.

“Probably just taking a piss,” Mary suggests, opening her eyes from where she's leaning against a tree opposite Emily. Her voice gives her away, wavering just slightly as she too glances up and down the narrow path they’re all sprawled out on. Pete isn't clearly visible on either side of them, but the trail curves so he could have just stepped out a little further than their vision. “He’ll be back in a minute.”

He’s not. Five minutes pass and Pete’s nowhere to be found.

“Is anyone sure they didn’t see him?” Emily’s anxiety is clearly growing by the second as she chews on her lip. “Anything? Out of the corner of their eyes?”

“ _Ben_ ,” Sammy starts, giving him a somewhat joking look and Ben looks confusedly back at him.

“Huh?”

“I mean, you don’t like him all that much…a few minutes alone with him in a scary fucked up woods…” Sammy trails off and Ben hits his arm when he realizes what Sammy’s mock-insinuating.

“Dude!” Ben whines. “I wouldn’t _off_ Pete! And you’ve been talking to me the entire time, so I wouldn’t even have the chance!”

“If that’s all that’s stopping you,” Sammy mocks, but Ben can tell it’s to hide his own worry, his eyes flickering around like he’s pleading Pete to come out.

“I bet he’s just playing a joke,” Ben says, deciding to have a similar coping mechanism to Sammy. “It’d be just like that asshole to –”

“This isn’t a laughing matter,” Emily says with a tight voice, and Ben's stomach sinks at the thought that he's disappointed Emily. “I’d call out for him but, well, I don’t want anything to _hear_ us.”

Ben internally curses himself for being a jackass and quickly scoots closer to Emily to put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We’ll look, alright? We’ll go down the path – he can’t have strayed far. Maybe two of us one way, three of us the other?”

“We can’t split up,” Troy says with sudden clarity as he clambers to his feet, almost like he’s been struck with a new fear. His eyes glaze over with worry. “These woods aren’t the same. I can’t promise I’ll be able to lead us anywhere. Not to mention that us parting ways, well. I think that’d be pretty final. I don’t see us finding each other again.”

“We’d just follow the path…back to…to the center,” Sammy says, and Ben can practically see his painful swallow as he reconciles their current predicament with the Void that surrounds them. “But of course that didn’t turn out so well for the campsite –”

Ben steps backwards to try and peer through the thicket of trees to see if he can get any sort of sense for where Pete could’ve gone.

That’s when he sees it.

A small light, almost like a lantern. Instead of a soft glow, it's a hot white beam far off in the distance, and Ben involuntarily takes a step in its direction. 

“Does Pete have a flashlight?” Ben finds himself asking without realizing, but no one answers him. He can hear the others’ voices, but they seem muted now, more noise than words. A buzzing in the background. Surely not important, not compared to the light.

Ben’s eyes follow the beam as it darts through the trees, faster than Ben would expect someone to be able to walk.

“I’m,” Ben tires to speak again, but his voice sounds far away to his own ears, like there's too much blood rushing through his head. “I’m gonna follow that light, guys.”

He feels something pull at his shoulder but Ben steps off the path anyway, feeling at once like he’s walking through sludge and floating above the world. He’s not really in control of his legs, he doesn’t think, but that isn’t quite worrying him outside the peripheral corners of his mind that are asking if this is such a good idea.

All Ben knows is that he needs to follow that light. It’s important. It _means_ something.

He hears a shout, but then all he can hear is buzzing in his ear, like an electrical board is powering up. Maybe the forest is getting ready to light up again, this time with brilliant white light instead of the sun, an opposite to the dismal gloom of its black light.

The light glows brighter and larger the closer Ben gets. He walks in a straight line - shouldn't he have run into a tree or something by now? He doesn't have the mental coordination necessary to analyze that, or to stop. He just keeps walking, the woods seemingly rearranging themselves around him so that he can meet the light. 

Ben isn't sure how long it is before he's in the same clearing as the light. A floating orb in the middle of the trees, emanating warmth. It's beautiful compared to the dull darkness it surrounds.

Ben reaches out his hand without hesitation. He doesn’t worry about getting burned.

Ben’s shaking fingers meet the light, and the world instantaneously begins to melt, dissolving around him. Ben's mind is too slow to be afraid. Everything is murky, twisting, Ben has to close his eyes to keep the nausea at bay.

When he opens them, he’s not in the woods anymore. He's standing in a room bathed in orange and white light. A room he recognizes, a room so achingly familiar…

“ _You worried your mother half to death. And made me come back to this hellhole of a town_.”

Ben’s staring up at his father, dwarfed by him always, half his height. Ben always feels minuscule compared to his father who towers above him. He looks like he did the last time Ben saw him, a handlebar mustache and broad shoulders, half-growling at Ben as he glares him down in the kitchen of Ben’s childhood home.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” Ben finds himself his dad, begging him to understand, fear and guilt spilling over him. _“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry._ ”

“ _You’re all she’s got, kid, I don’t want you thinking you can just leave her,”_ his dad snarls, and Ben’s terrified but almost exhilarated. This shouting is the most his dad has paid attention to him in all his twelve years of life –

No, wait, Ben’s not twelve anymore, hasn’t been twelve for a good long while, but it feels like no time has passed at all as his father shouts him down.

_“Called me in fuckin’ Reno, kid, and I had duck out of some prior engagements to come find my missing son, you know you fucked up that is? And her all mopin’ and cryin’ – and then you’re not even fuckin’ dead?”_

Ben always knew his father wished he didn’t exist, but it doesn’t stop him from bursting into tears, then or now, if there’s even a difference between the two. Ben struggles to remember what life was like after twelve – didn’t time just stop then?

 _“Rick! Shut the hell up!_ ”

Betty Arnold, his savior, steps into the hazy kitchen, a furious and appalled look on her face as she marches over and slaps Ben’s father across the face hard enough to leave a mark. She's younger than Ben remembers, more frazzled too, her dark piled up messily on her head and mascara running.

 _“You don’t talk to him like that! Ever!_ ”

She kneels down to Ben’s level with an apologetic and fierce smile, and Ben can feel himself collapsing into her. She’s so warm, so comforting, so real, so much better than all the black light and muted world and –

And his friends. What about his friends? Where’s Sammy? Where’s Emily?

Where the fuck is Ben, for that matter?

He’s not a kid anymore, regardless of how good hit feels to have his mother wrap her arms around him and hold him close like she’s doing, stroking his hair and whispering that she loves him and begging Ben never to leave her again. It’s been fifteen years since he got lost in Perdition Wood and his father yelled at him in his mother’s kitchen for somehow managing to be alive. Why does it feel like it’s happening right now?

“ _Mom_?” Ben asks as he pulls away and his mother smiles down at him, watery but so, so loving. She's always been so perfect, and Ben wants her to take care of him. He wants to lay down and have his mom make him soup, comb his tangled hair and watch cartoons with him. “ _Are you real?”_

 _“Of course I am, honey_ ,” she says, and Ben tries to peer around her to see where his father is but he doesn’t seem to be there anymore. That’s not right – his mother and father had screamed at each other for twenty minutes before his father left in a huff and Ben never saw him again. That’s how the story goes. _“C’mon, let’s go get ice cream, okay_?”

“ _Wait,_ ” Ben tries to say but then he hears a voice behind him.

“Ben! C;mon! You need to get out of here."

Ben's mom's face doesn't change. Didn't she hear the voice?

But no, she hadn't, Betty's inviting Ben to come with her and he wants to take her outstretched hand so badly. Still, just because Betty hadn't heard the voice didn't mean that Ben hadn't. And the voice sounded so insistent, almost urgent. Ben looks at his smiling mother one last time before he forces himself to turn around, slow and painful, against his every instinct.

There's a man standing behind him, learning against the stovetop in his childhood kitchen. And.... _not_ his childhood kitchen. Somehow, simultaneously, the kitchen flickers into a darkened forest, trees and brush half-shrouding the man from full view.

Ben has a full view of his face in his kitchen, though, and it's a face he recognizes. It’s not anyone he’s met in person, only someone he knows from book jacket covers, YouTube videos, a few scattered pieces of interview footage.

Jack Wright, his wavy brown hair smeared with black dirt, a significant amount of stubble that's clearly not been taken care of in any way, dirty fingernails and mud-caked hands, a thin blue t-shirt all that he has to separate him from the elements of the forest, with a few scattered cuts and smears of blood on his forehead and around his eyebrows.

Jack Wright, standing in the Void and also in Ben’s kitchen at the same time, looking down at Ben with bright and alert eyes that have an affection in them that Ben gravitates to automatically.

He pulls away from his mother to stare at Jack, gaping and open-mouthed.

“Hey Ben,” Jack smiles at him, the greeting almost familiar, and Ben finds himself not able to breathe with all the questions he has for Jack. They all stick in his throat, unable to get out. “Seriously, dude, you _need_ to get out of here. I know you don’t want to go, I know you’d rather stay here with your mom – and it’d be so, so easy to do that – but you can’t. This is where the Shadowmaker wants you, distracted and powerless and under his control. Your friends are out there and they need you. You have to find them, alright?”

 _“Benny, stay here with me_ ,” his mother’s voice says from behind him but there’s something distinctly lacking about it, something so _not_ Betty Arnold that Ben stops himself from turning back. His mom wouldn't want him to leave his friends behind. Instead of rushing back to her, Ben stares in awe at Jack instead.

“ _How?”_ Ben asks Jack.

Jack smiles at him, brighter than Ben expected. He reaches out.

Ben meets his hand halfway.

The light doesn’t so much as fade as it does sputter and go out like a shitty appliance would. Ben feels the world practically turn upside down, twist him into pieces and break him in half. He screws his eyes shut with a scream –

Ben isn’t sure how long the pain lasts, but he wakes up on the forest floor, half-propped up against a tree. He feels like a car has run over his chest it hurts so badly, but when he presses against it, his ribcage feels whole. Maybe just a little bruised.

“Hello?” Ben whispers out into the darkened, muted world, but the trees don’t even rustle in response. Ben shivers even though there is no cold, pulling his checkered jacket tighter around his shoulders.

The hallucination of his parents is still running through his mind, but it’s almost entirely overshadowed with the shock of seeing Jack Wright, the real Jack Wright, flesh and bone, standing in front of him.

That hadn’t been a hallucination or an illusion. That hadn’t been a trick or ploy to trap him by the Shadowmaker.

That was Jack Wright, and he’d saved Ben’s life.

And now Ben is alone.


	7. Chapter Six

It’s easier to move through the forest without his pack on, but Ben would carry ten times the weight if it meant he wasn’t stumblingly blindly alone through the place that had haunted his nightmares all his life.

He wants to call out, but fear of the Shadowmaker stops him. At least now he has some sort of tangible proof of the Shadowmaker's existence beyond scribbling in a notebook. Jack had told Ben himself. Ben had seen Jack Wright, _talked_ to Jack Wright.

Ben wishes he would’ve asked where Jack was, how he could find him, how Ben had wound up in possession of his notebook. The opportunity is gone now, and even through his worry about his team, Ben mourns the chance to ask Jack everything he ever wished he could.

If the Shadowmaker came after him, would Jack come and save him again?

Ben shuts the thought out of his head, no time to analyze repercussions of anything right now. What he needs to do is find Sammy, Emily, and the rest of his team, even fucking Pete Meyers. Jack said they needed him, and Ben trusts Jack more than he trusts anything right now. 

Ben ignores any lights he sees in the distance, keeping his eyes shielded, knowing that down that path lay only horror. 

He can't find the actual path regardless of how many twists and turns he makes as he tries to retrace his steps from when he followed the light. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of rhyme or reason the layout of the forest around him, and Ben swears he walks past the same spot a dozen times.

Like Troy had said – the woods aren't the same anymore. They don't comply with any law of nature. They aren't woods at all, really. This is the Void.

Ben stops short when he hears the sound of sticks cracking like someone’s walking overtop them. That could be a shadow monster, but it also could be a person. Do shadow monsters walk?

Ben stays completely still until, through the thicket of trees, he catches a glimpse of bright red hair. 

Ben stares. No one on their expedition has red hair. Troy and Mary are blonde, Sammy and Emily are brown-haired, Pete’s some sort of horrid dishwater color that doesn’t even sort of resemble red.

“Hello?” Ben calls out, not nearly as loud as he could and the figure jumps and whirls around.

Ben takes an involuntary step closer the second he sees her face, using his hands to brush the tree branches separating the two of them out of the way. The woman doesn't make any moves to do the same; she only stares at him. She’s a young woman, probably about Ben’s age or a little younger, with a heart-shaped face and wide blue eyes that practically glow with their unexpected light in the dark trees.

“Who are you?” The woman whispers, her eyes growing wider. Ben takes a tentative few steps toward her, holding his hands up to show her that he means no harm. He can see a smattering of freckles on her cheeks as he gets closer.

“Hi,” Ben says, soft as can be. “I’m Ben, Ben Arnold – I’m lost, I’m looking for my friends.”

“Oh,” the woman’s shoulders relax, she even half-smiles at him as he approaches her. He stops a few feet away, just in case this is some sort of ploy. “You look more solid than most of the people I see here, Ben.”

“More…solid?” Ben asks. The woman nods.

“Most people seem…translucent, almost,” the woman says, half to Ben and half in a murmur to herself. “Like ghosts.”

“Apparitions,” Ben corrects out of habit, and the woman turns to him with a cocked head, curious.

“How’d you get here?” She asks. “I haven’t seen a new face in – God, in so long…”

“How long have you been here?” Ben asks her and she shrugs.

“I don’t think time works the same way here,” she says, biting her lip. “A week? A year? Ten years? It’s all the same to me. All I know is that I’ve been wandering all alone…it’s nice you have friends to find, Ben.”

“I’ll be your friend,” Ben tells her, all seriousness. Sympathy for her spills into his voice. It must be so horrible to be trapped here for long enough that there's no conception of time anymore. He wonders how long she's really been here. “I have a group – we’re on an expedition here to investigate this place. I can take you back to them and we can get you out of here.”

He expects the woman to be enthusiastic and grateful, but instead she just smiles sadly, like Ben's naive for even suggesting it.

“There’s no getting out of here,” she says, quiet and regretful in a way that makes Ben’s heart seize up with pity and a desire to help her.

“Who are you? What’s your name?” Ben asks, and the woman pauses for a moment.

“Debbie,” she says, and Ben can’t help his mouth from falling open. “Debbie Peterson. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

She takes a quick step backward as her shoulders scrunch together with fear, and Ben holds a hand to stop her from moving away.

“Debbie Peterson,” Ben repeats a few times, gaping like a fish. “How – Debbie? Debbie Peterson? How the hell can you –”

“That’s not very nice,” Debbie wrinkles her nose at Ben, but then her voice turns hopeful as she steps closer to him again, blue-green eyes growing wider. “What? Have you heard of me? Is anyone looking for me?”

“Looking?” Ben squeaks, heart in his throat. “Debbie – Debbie you were _found._ Years ago. Five years ago, I think. Up in northern Ontario?”

“That’s where I lived,” Debbie says, and now her shoulders are tight again as she steps back defensively. “But how can I have been found if I’m still _here_? What would I be? You’re lying to me.”

“I’m not,” Ben stares at her, trying valiantly to remember everything he’s ever read about Debbie Peterson. “You – you had just moved to a cabin up north from Toronto. You went on a hike with your dog. The dog came back. You didn’t. That was what, 2009?”

“That’s right,” Debbie says slowly, and then with a bite of her lip, “Tootsie made it back? She was okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, she was fine,” Ben reassures her, though he’s sure Tootsie is long gone by now. “And then you were found in 2014, in the same area. Just lying there, unconscious. No sign of struggle, no damage other than nicks and bruises.”

“How do you know all of this?” Debbie asks, voice still suspicious but Ben can tell she's leaving room for some sort of hope.

“ _Shadows in the Dark –_ Jack Wright’s book, it came out just before he –” Ben swallows, Jack Wright's face so clear in his mind. All those scrapes and bruises. “It’s all about this place – the Void. He interviewed you for one of his chapters about your experience.”

“My _experience_?” Debbie lets out a disbelieving laugh. “I hardly believe that.”

“Please, I’m telling the truth,” Ben says, even though nothing about this conversation is making any fucking sense to him. Is Debbie some sort of hallucination, too? Or is she real? Somewhere in between, an apparition or essence? Does anyone ever really make it out of here? “You said – goddamn it, what did you say about how you escaped –”

“There is no escape,” Debbie says, and though her eyes are still untrusting, her mouth has softened and her voice is laced with a wistful longing. “Not from this place.”

“No, there is, I swear there is – you said you didn’t remember much, that it all blurred together,” Ben says, the pieces coming back to him, “but that you remember that in between your hallucinations, you met someone in the woods and they touched your hand and it was like you just melted away and fell back to reality –”

Ben stares at her, remembering how Jack had touched his hand, how he had fallen from his hallucination and back into the Void. Yes, this is an entirely different sort of circumstance– this is real, or as real as the Void got, and Debbie –

Ben has to try. He reaches a tentative hand out, fingers outstretched to Debbie like he’s offering a handshake.

Debbie stares at him for a moment, eyes flickering between Ben’s face and his hand.

Her fingers fold around his. 

It’s instantaneous. Ben doesn’t even feel their hands touch. One moment Debbie is there, the next she isn’t. She’s dissolved before Ben’s eyes, blink and you miss it.

Ben stares at the spot she stood.

What the absolute fuck was that?

He thinks about just curling up in a ball right then and there and sobbing for a while before he continues onward, but that plan is derailed when he hears the sound of a woman crying somewhere in the distance, at first just sniffles until Ben hears a choked sob. 

“Debbie?” Ben whispers, wondering if she’s hiding behind a tree, but Debbie appears to be gone. Back to Ontario, back –

Back in time, apparently.

Ben follows the sound of the cries as he contends with that insane thought, and he feels like he has to be getting close, the cries keep getting louder and louder like the woman’s right in front of him.

And then suddenly she is. Ben stumbles through the densely packed trees and into a tiny grove path where Emily Potter is sitting on the ground, surrounding by six backpacks and crying into her hands.

“Emily?” Ben breathes out, relieved and worried all at once. Emily’s head snaps up and she gazes at him like he’s a miracle.

“Oh, Benny!” Emily leaps to her feet and before Ben knows it, she’s hugging him close, squeezing the absolute life out of him as she sniffles.

Ben buries his face in her shoulder and lets tears spring to his eyes as well, so happy that she’s safe.

“Thank God,” Emily says with fervor in her voice as she lets him go, her bright brown eyes equal parts terrified and thankful. “Oh thank God, I was so worried. Everyone just kept disappearing, one moment they were here and the next they weren’t. I wanted to come search for you all, but I couldn’t carry six packs at once and we’re never going to survive without supplies –”

“I really think we could,” Ben says, staring down at the packs as a new hypothesis forms in his head. “I mean, there’s no weather, we don’t need anything for warmth. And have you been hungry at all today? Or thirsty?”

“I – no, no I haven’t,” Emily says, staring down at the packs as well in shock. “Jesus. This place –”

“– is horrifically fucked up,” Ben says and Emily nods in agreement. “I’m so glad you stayed with the packs, though, because I’ve got something way more valuable than water.”

Ben kneels to dig in his backpack before he pulls out Jack’s notebook, rolled up in Ben’s extra sweater. It's time to let his team know - they can't  _not_ know that Ben saw Jack Wright, and Ben can't tell them about that without telling them about the notebook. There's a connection. There has to be. 

“What’s that?” Emily asks, squinting a bit confusedly at it.

“Jack Wright’s notebook that he wrote in leading up to when he disappeared,” Ben says, and Emily’s mouth falls open. He explains to her what he’d been through since they’d seen each other last, along with the details about the Shadowmaker wanting the notebook with only a bit of hesitation.

Jack Wright had saved his life. This had all suddenly gotten much more pressing.

“You’re sure Jack wasn’t just a part of the hallucination?” Emily asks a little uncertainly, but she's clearly willing to believe Ben. Her eyes have hope that Ben knows is reflected in his own. 

“No way. That was him,” Ben says firmly, and Emily nods. “I might’ve doubted it too – but that combined with literally having his notebook…”

“You’re right,” Emily leafs through the book, skimming Jack's final words. “Wait a second – what does this mean? I thought there wasn’t anything written after the message about black lightning.”

“There wasn’t,” Ben says, and quickly peers over Emily’s shoulder to look at the final page of the book. “Oh, shit.”

There, in Jack’s cramped handwriting, are directions. _Right ‘til oak tree, turn left, hit path, go right._ It goes on for most of the page.

“Instructions,” Ben says, a breathless laugh escaping him. “From Jack, I’ll bet!”

“How would he know where to take us?” Emily asks, gazing down in shock. “Let alone where we need to go?”

“He told me I needed to save my friends,” Ben says, springing to his feet with the notebook in his hands, and Emily quickly follows his lead, wiping her hands on her jeans. “I bet this takes us toward them.”

“What if it’s a trick?” Emily quickly places a hand on Ben’s shoulder, probably at the hurt look Ben got involuntarily. “Not that Jack would trick you – but this Shadowmaker person. You’re sure he hasn’t contaminated this somehow?”

“We have to take the chance,” Ben says, his heart racing. “I mean – what would our alternative be? It's the best lead we’ve got.”

Emily bites her lip, but she nods all the same. “Alright, Benny. I trust you.”

They decide to leave their supplies behind other than packing up all six sleeping bags, though Ben is sure to take an extra coat. He hasn’t forgotten almost freezing to death, and knows that the script could flip at any time. He insists Emily do the same, and she does so with a sympathetic pat on his arm.

They follow the careening instructions of the notebook through the woods, not stumbling on any shadows, monsters, or other lost wanderers. Ben isn’t sure how relieved he is about that. Though he told Emily about Debbie, that whole experience still bothers him. He hopes beyond hope that he saved her and that she woke up in Ontario five years ago, but the thought makes Ben’s head hurt.

“There’s only one more left turn, two hundred yards,” Emily instructs Ben as she squints down at the notebook. Ben starts walking faster. “Is there anyone –?”

“Oh, shit,” Ben says as he rounds the corner and sees two figures propped up against the same tree.

Troy and Mary, Mary’s head lolling almost dangerously, a drop of dried blood on her forehead. Troy open-mouthed, glassy-eyed, still as death.

“No, no, _no_ ,” Ben skids to the ground next to Mary's body, cupping her cheek to keep her head held up. He hears Emily's horrified gasp from behind him but he doesn't turn back around, instead shaking Mary with his other hand. He tries desperately to wake her, tilting her head up as best he can. “Mary, please, Mary – _Mary_ – you need to wake up – we need you – your kids need you – _Tim_ needs you –”

Mary’s eyes fly open the second Ben says Tim’s name.

“T-Tim?” Mary hacks out a series of sharp coughs, her eyes blinking rapidly. Ben falls back on his heels, veins pumping with adrenaline and relief that she's awake now and seems to be alright. “Where’s Tim? Where’d he go?”

“What do you mean?” Ben asks, glancing wildly around the forest for a sight of someone before he remembers that Mary had probably hallucinated her husband just like Ben had hallucinated his mother. “That was just a dream, Mary – a nightmare. A trick by whoever’s in charge of this place.”

“No, no, I know that,” Mary coughs and Ben thumps her back. He glances over at Emily, who’s quietly shaking Troy. His eyes are open, but almost entirely glazed over and he’s not responding to her pleading questions. “I knew which Tim was fake. But there was a real one – my Tim – told me to wake up. And then you were shaking me…”

“Tim was in the Void,” Ben says slowly, thinking of Debbie. Tim isn't in the Void now, but really, neither is Debbie – and yet somehow, they still are. “God, I think you’re right – I think that was him. I think he saved you.”

“S’goin’on?” Troy slurs finally and Ben and Mary both jolt, moving in his direction. Ben puts a hand on his knee and squeezes, giving an exhausted looking Emily a shared look of relief that their friends are safe and Jack's notebook led them to the right place. 

“Hey cowboy, how’s it going?” Mary's voice is soft as she puts a comforting arm around Troy. “C’mon, hon, you gotta get out of there.”

“Loretta –” Troy winces and coughs. “I’m sure it wasn’t really her, but – gosh darn did it feel like her.”

“I understand,” Ben says softly, a little pain in his chest still at the thought of his mother. “Do either of you know what happened to Sammy? Or Pete?”

He adds Pete as an afterthought.

Both of them shake their heads regretfully, Troy biting his lip like it pains him not to be able to give Ben the answer he wants to hear.

“I just remember a light, and it felt like home. I wanted it so badly…” Mary shakes her head, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “I couldn’t control myself.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Ben puts his hand on hers. Her fingers are cold but tight as they grasp his own. “None of us could resist it. Well, except for Emily. I guess that’s why she’s the leader here.”

“Oh, stop it, Benny,” Emily says, and though her smile is weak, it’s full of affection. Her gaze turns serious when she says “Are you sure there isn’t any other –”

A shout of pain in the distance interrupts whatever Emily’s about to say next, and all four of them jump.

Ben instantaneously recognizes the voice as Sammy’s, just lower and rougher and more anguished than Ben has grown accustomed to hearing it. The adrenaline starts pumping through him again, anxiety and nausea and all the rest. Something sounds  _wrong_.

“Sammy?” Ben bolts to his feet, eyes searching the forest around them for any sign of where Sammy could be, trying not to panic. “Sammy, can you hear me?”

“Benny, don’t yell,” Emily whispers as she looks up at him, but Ben’s already rushing in what he thinks was the direction Sammy’s voice came from.

“Sammy, where are you? Can you hear me? Can you follow my voice?” Ben asks, and he’s only met with another guttural cry. Ben has to struggle with brush and trees to get in that direction, but he finally manages to tangle himself out of them and through the thicket to get to Sammy.

Ben sees Sammy’s head first, angled almost painfully against a tree trunk, face convulsed in agony. Ben falls in front of him only to see that the rest of Sammy’s body is shivering, almost quaking like he’s – like he’s –

Like he’s freezing to death.

“Sammy, Sammy, God, please, Sammy, you have to wake up,” Ben pleads, stripping off his own winter coat to leave just his checkered coat on, covering Sammy with it as he shakes. He doesn’t seem to realize Ben is here, his eyes entirely glazed over as he cries out again. “Please, I need you, I need you to wake up, c’mon Sammy –”

Ben takes a hold of Sammy’s wrist and squeezes as tight as he can, nails digging into Sammy’s skin. Sammy’s eyes jolt open.

His body shifts toward Ben, and Ben almost breaks down weeping with relief. Before he can though, Sammy starts to whimper, small at first but then full flooded sobs. Even though his body is no longer convulsing and the shouts of pain have stopped, he sobs out over and over like he's hurt, like something's hurting him right now. 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” Ben whispers, trying to convince Sammy as well as himself.  He leans forward to pull Sammy up into a sitting position so Ben can hug him, hold him tight and show him that he's alright. Sammy immediately collapses against Ben, body limp other than the tremors that run through him every few seconds. “It’s over now. It’s over.”

“I didn’t want it to be,” Sammy whimpers, almost to himself it’s so quiet. His sobs taper off into rolling tears. “I wanted to stay – I was home, I was home for the first time in so long and – and now I’m here again –”

“Shh,” Ben says, resting his head on Sammy’s shoulder as he feels a wave of rolling sadness for Sammy and whatever he’d just hallucinated. It had to have been a place Sammy wanted to stay forever rather than come back here to the empty Void. Ben supposes that’s the trick. Get you to die in your own hallucination. “It would’ve killed you, Sammy. You would’ve died.”

“B-Ben?” Sammy breaks away from him to look down in shock. Ben wonders if Sammy had known it was him all along, but he puts that thought out of his head. Sammy knows now, his eyes wide and concerned as they rake over Ben. “I – what – what happened? Are you alright? What cut your face?”

“What?” Ben asks, reaching up to touch the blood on his eyebrow that he only just realized was even there. “Oh, it was probably just a branch – it doesn’t matter – are _you_ alright?”

Sammy bits his lip hard enough that Ben can see the blood he draws, and Sammy stares past Ben into them middle distance.

“No,” Sammy admits, screwing his eyes shut. “But I think you just saved my life. I – God, I’m so fucking cold.”

Ben can’t help it. He hugs Sammy again, long and tight, and this time Sammy hugs back.


	8. Chapter Seven

“We need a new plan of action,” Emily wrings her hands together as she unfurls her sleeping bag. “Rest and recovery is all good for now. But the next thing we need to do is find Pete and then get the hell out of this place.”

“We could leave Pete,” Ben half-suggests to Sammy quietly enough that only he can hear it. Sammy’s got red eyes and he’s still shivering like crazy but he gives Ben a fond look nonetheless. “Kidding, obviously.”

“How do we get out?” Mary asks morosely. She’s already curled up in her own sleeping bag, even though she’s still sitting up next to Emily. “I mean – from what I’ve researched, people tend to just be found unconscious. If they’re found at all. I don’t think many people wander out of their own free will.”

“We have to try,” Emily says, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to convince herself. “Troy, is there any way…?”

“I can do my best,” Troy says from where he’s slowly adding kindling to what will be their future fire for the evening. Troy had taken one look at Sammy quaking and decided that a fire had to be made immediately, which had made Sammy smile up at him in relief. The smile wavered, but it had been real. “I can’t guarantee anything, though. I have no idea what this place is anymore. I don’t think we’re in Alaska, that’s for sure.”

“I don’t think we’re anywhere,” Mary says, her mouth set in a hard line as she shakes her head. “This place – it isn’t _of_ the world, I don’t think. It’s separate from it.”

“There could be a scientific –” Sammy starts more than a little desperately, looking at Emily for guidance but Emily just shakes her head.

“Not that I know,” Emily sighs, staring at the ground as she pulls her sleeping bag more tightly around her. “This place – the laws that hold our universe together don’t seem to apply here.”

“Are there even any rules here at all?” Troy asks to which Ben and Emily both respond yes simultaneously, and Emily smiles affectionately over at him. Ben feels unexpectedly warm, a blush hitting his cheeks. 

“The Shadowmaker,” Ben says, the warm feeling disappearing as he suppresses a shudder. “He sets the rules here.”

“What, he’s like…the god of this tiny universe?” Sammy asks, tightening his shoulders together. “No offense, but that sounds insane.”

“No, it sounds reasonable thinking about what we've been through. Reasonable and dangerous,” Emily shivers and it’s definitely not due to any cold weather. “Tomorrow – well, I guess tomorrow morning, though we have no way of knowing what morning is – we get out of here.”

“Is anyone….tired?” Ben asks, a thought occurring to him. “Not like tired of walking tired, but is anyone exhausted? Is anyone like, _God, I just really need to sleep right now_?”

“What does that –?” Troy starts but Emily shakes her head slowly with widening eyes.

“I think Ben’s saying that none of us need food or water right now,” Emily says, hunching her shoulders like she doesn't want to speak this into reality. “So…none of us need sleep either.”

Mary sighs miserably, curling in on herself. Sammy's lips become a thin line, but he doesn't argue. 

“Jesus, I see why people survive out here for so long,” Troy throws a log into the fire for kindling. “I mean, I know Tim was only gone a few weeks but there are folks who’ve disappeared for years and still came back, aren’t there? Now I see why.”

Ben and Emily trade a look at that, and Ben knows they’re both thinking about Debbie. Still, Debbie is much more complicated than just that – Debbie was found years and years ago, and yet somehow Ben saw her.

“Alright, here’s some warmth for you, Sammy,” Troy says as flames begin to spring up and he fans them lightly. Sammy, clearly relieved if the way the creases on his forehead disappear, moves closer to the fire, putting his hands out to warm them. Ben follows suit, knocking their knees together.

“Even if we don’t need sleep, we should still rest,” Mary says, mostly to Emily. “Today has been – well – not exactly the easiest.”

“I agree,” Emily says quickly, rubbing a small gentle circle on Mary’s back that Mary leans into. “Hopefully Pete will see our fire and find us. We can work on finding a way out in the morning.”

“Or something _else_ will see it,” Ben says and regrets it immediately when he gets four identical terrified looks. “Sorry.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the crackling flames of the fire. Troy adds a couple more logs to it to make it larger, and Ben leans on Sammy’s shoulder just in case he’s still cold. Sammy puts an arm around Ben seemingly automatically, which warms Ben up more than just physically.

“ _Mary_?”

A voice, almost a whisper, breezes through the clearing like a gust of wind.

Mary’s head jolts to her left, eyes widening. “I – did someone say my name?”

“No,” Ben says, as everyone else shakes their head. “But I heard it. The voice wasn’t familiar, is there anyone else –”

“ _Mary, it’s me, it’s Tim. Where are you_?”

Mary’s lip begins to quiver and Ben can see her fists clench, but she doesn’t stand. Emily takes a hold of Mary’s hand with her own, knotting their fingers together as Emily presses her forehead against Mary’s and whispers words of comfort.

The woods around them are still as death. There are no people, no faces. Just voices. Just whispers.

That's when Ben notices the shadows creeping around their peripheries, there but not quite solid, malevolent yet still somehow far away and unreachable.  

“Tim,” Mary whispers, strangled. “Tim, are you there? Tim –”

“It’s not real,” Sammy tells her, his own voice shaking as he looks wildly at the shadows lurking just outside the flames. “Mary, it’s not real, it’s just a hallucination. Ignore it and it’ll go away –”

“How can _we_ hear it if she’s hallucinating?” Troy says almost to himself.

An unfamiliar voice whispers “ _Help me!_ ” what feels like right next to Ben’s ear and Ben jumps almost a foot in the air. Sammy’s arm around his shoulder steadies him.

“ _Mary! Mary, it’s me, can you hear me?”_

“It sounds so real,” Mary whimpers, burying her head in her knees and Emily loops an arm around her shoulder.

“I think because it is,” Ben says quietly, and Mary jolts up to stare at him in shock. “I have a theory. About this place. But I don’t want to say it until the voices go away. Just in case one of them is the Shadowmaker – I don’t want him to hear.”

They all stay quiet, but the forest is anything but silent. A series of calls, desperate and pleading, from voices familiar and not, echo into their little clearing. Ben even thinks he hears his own voice call out for Emily, for Sammy, even though he doesn’t open his mouth.

Troy begins to add more kindling, and the more he adds, the more the voices fade. Before long, the fire is blazing and the voices have faded to whispers, mingling with the shadows moving in the distance.

“Shitfire,” Troy shakes his head. “I wish those shadows would disappear.”

“If we stay near the fire, I don’t think they can get too close,” Mary says, her eyes wide and terrified but voice solid as can be. “I hope Pete’s okay, wherever he is, that those things aren’t –”

She breaks off with a bitter twist of her mouth, and when she speaks again, she’s staring right at Ben. “Ben, what did you mean when you said you thought the voices were real? Do you think – do you think Tim’s back here? I can’t imagine how he would’ve gotten to Alaska, but…”

“I don’t think he’s _back,_ exactly,” Ben swallows, knowing how crazy he’s going to sound. The only thing that gives him the courage to keep talking is Emily’s encouraging nod at him. “I think that time is different here. Not just because there’s no night and day – but I think that when you’re hearing Tim, you’re hearing him when he _was_ here.”

“You think –?” Mary blinks at him, dread creeping into her voice. “You think people never really leave this place?”

“No, no,” Ben says quickly, and Sammy looks down at him with curious but apprehensive eyes. “I mean - maybe a little. What I mean is that I think this place always has everyone who’s ever been inside.”

“What?” Sammy asks, a mystified expression on his face. “Ben, explain.”

“Time works differently,” Ben says, struggling to articulate what he’s piecing together in his mind. “We can all agree on that, yeah?”

He gets three understanding nods and a skeptical raised eyebrow from Sammy. Ben elbows Sammy in the side to keep him from arguing. “Just assume that for now.”

Sammy lets out a breath that sounds mostly like a laugh, but he nods all the same.

“I think that time is always the same here,” Ben says. “Like, someone who went missing, say, ten years ago and was found three years later – we could see them here. I mean, I saw Debbie Peterson earlier.”

Sammy’s eyebrows go up into his hairline and Troy makes a surprised noise. “She was found –”

“Yeah, I know,” Ben cuts Troy off. “That’s what I’m saying – I think that time here is like, all happening at once. Everyone who ever disappeared into the Void, it’s possible we could stumble upon them. So even though Tim is out of the Void and at home in Georgia, we just heard Tim from six months ago when he was still stuck in here.”

“It makes sense,” Emily says, her look at Ben solid and almost proud.

Sammy cuts her off with a slightly panicked “Uh, no it doesn’t.”

“In a paranormal, fucked up kind of way,” Emily gives Sammy a sympathetic smile.

“So you’re saying that everyone in here is following their own timeline that doesn’t necessarily correspond with ours,” Troy pieces it together and Ben nods at him, glad Troy is articulating this better than he can. “So we can see people from different years in the past – hell, maybe even the future – and not realize it.”

“Exactly,” Ben says. “Which is why even though Debbie Peterson was found five years ago, I talked to her now. She was in 2014 and I was in 2019, but none of that _really_ matters in this place. We’re all always here. Hell, I bet….I bet I’m still here. I bet I’m still here as a twelve year old kid.”

The implications of the thought catch up to Ben and a wave of nausea sweeps over him. It must show on his face, because Sammy’s arm around him gets even tighter.

“So Tim’s still here – but he’s also at home,” Mary repeats, blinking tears away rapidly.

“This makes no sense,” Sammy declares. Ben can tell he’s freaking out a little, so Ben puts an arm around Sammy as well, looping around his waist. Even though Sammy’s shivering less, he still gets jolts of shakes that Ben hopes he can help quell. “How can this place be removed from time? That’s not _possible_.”

“Do you have a better explanation?” Ben asks and Sammy gives him a long look before shaking his head, eyes clouding over slightly, not making contact with Ben’s. Ben shifts even closer to Sammy and Sammy doesn’t move away.

“So you saw Debbie Peterson,” Mary says to Ben, her forehead creasing together as she thinks. “And I heard Tim, and saw Tim when I was hallucinating. Is there anyone else we’ve seen? Has anyone seen Nancy Fletcher?”

Everyone shakes their head.

“I keep thinking I hear voices,” Troy says, “not just here around the fire, but – in general. I don’t know who the voices are, though.”

“I…” Ben swallows, and decides that honesty has to be the best policy right now. “I saw Jack Wright.”

He was expecting a pretty sizable reaction from all of his friends. Jack Wright is a big name, after all, and easily the most well-known person to disappear in relation to the Void.

What he wasn’t expecting was for Sammy to suddenly spring away from him like he’d been burned, staring down at Ben with huge, terrified eyes like Ben’s never seen from him.

With a breathless voice that very nearly cracks, Sammy says “ _What_?”

“Jack Wright, like _the_ Jack Wright?” Mary asks, her eyes growing wider. “Well, I mean – he’s still in here, in 2019, that’s not necessarily proof of your timeline theory but – holy shit. _The_ Jack Wright?”

“W-where? When?” Sammy’s almost demanding, and his fingers are twitching. Ben doesn’t know what’s gotten him so worked up, but he reaches over and takes a hold of Sammy’s wrist in the hopes that it’ll calm him down.

“When I was hallucinating, I think he snapped me out of it,” Ben explains. “He told I needed to go save my friends, and then he touched my hand – and I woke up.”

“That’s a hallucination, that’s not – that’s not _Jack_ ,” Sammy says, and Emily gives Sammy a confused look.

“It could be,” Emily says slowly, “but it’s just as likely that it could be real. I mean, Jack Wright is in here somewhere regardless of whether Ben saw him or not.”

“I – I can’t do this,” Sammy says, and there’s a wild look in his eye that Ben hates, and then suddenly Sammy’s standing and backing away from the fire, no longer next to Ben. “I need some air, I need – something –”

“Sammy!” Ben calls as Sammy turns away from the fire and begins going in the opposite direction. Ben turns back to everyone else in a panic, silently asking them what to do with his eyes. Emily seems so surprised at the outburst that she doesn’t respond right away.

“Ben - follow him, make sure he doesn’t –” Emily frets, but Ben’s already on it. He gets up and springs in the same direction Sammy went – he doesn’t want the forest to fuck them over and separate either of them from the group.

“Sammy!” Ben grabs Sammy’s arm the second it comes into view, at the bottom of the hill next to their fire. Sammy’s shaking, Ben can already tell, but he slows down enough to let Ben get an even pace with him. “Dude, you can’t leave the team. How will we ever find you again?”

“I’m sorry,” Sammy's voice quakes. When Ben finally gets a look at his face as he jumps out in front of Sammy in the trees to stop him in his path, there are tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “I’m sorry, I just – I can’t deal with this.”

“I know you don’t believe in this kind of thing,” Ben starts, desperate to try and find something to say to make Sammy feel better, and Sammy laughs even though nothing’s funny, “but c’mon, dude. You don’t have to accept it in your heart of hearts – I mean, hell, I might be wrong. But just accept it on surface level, enough to try and find a way out of here.”

“There is no way out,” Sammy whispers. “Like the Shadowmaker told you when we got here – no turning back now.”

“We have to try to find one,” Ben says, still wondering what the hell has gotten into his friend. Sammy’s been like a rock to him as long as they’ve been in here, calming Ben down when Ben wants to bounce off the walls. “And we will – I promise. We’ll get out of here and you can get back to your world where everything makes sense and time works right, okay?”

Ben meant to make Sammy feel better, but if anything the look on Sammy’s face just scrunches up with even more misery.

The back of his mind reminds Ben of what Sammy said when Ben had pulled him out of his hallucination: _I was home for the first time in so long._

Ben doesn’t give it a second’s thought before he’s hugging Sammy tightly, but he hopes gently too, to show gratefulness for when Sammy’s been gentle with Ben. Sammy sways for a moment as if surprised by the impact, but his hand slowly comes up to rest on Ben’s back and his chin hooks on the top of Ben’s head.

“It’s gonna be alright,” Ben says into Sammy’s collarbone. “We’re gonna make it through this.”

Ben doesn’t specify what _this_ is, hoping that Sammy will apply to whatever is making him so miserable – the Void or other more human entities.

“Sorry I bolted like that,” Sammy says quietly after a moment. “I – Emily and the others – they must be worried. C’mon, we can’t lose them.”

“Campsite’s straight up the hill from here, I can still see the fire,” Ben says as he breaks away from Sammy, though he doesn’t really want to. Sammy smiles at him though, much more whole than before. “I don’t think we’ll lose them tonight. At least I hope not.”

They brush shoulders as they walk back, and Sammy stays quiet but Ben thinks it’s more of a comfortable silence than anything to be concerned about.

“Glad there were no shadows out there anymore,” Ben says as they get closer and Sammy gets a pained look on his face.

“I didn’t even think – I’m sorry, Ben,” Sammy says, his hand coming to rest on Ben’s shoulder. “I put you in danger, I – that was so selfish.”

“It’s alright,” Ben says, trying to lace his voice with as much meaning and truth as possible. “I wanted to come after you – you’re my friend. That’s what friends do.”

Sammy’s smile is almost bright, even in the darkness around them. Ben counts that as a victory, smiling himself.

When they arrive at the fire though, his smile quickly slides off into confusion when he sees two women standing over their friends, both of them tall and lean, looking grateful and concerned as Emily says something to them about being on a scientific expedition.

Emily breaks off when she sees Sammy and Ben, giving them both relieved smiles. “Oh, thank God you’re alright. Don’t look so worried – we just had some other hikers see our fire and they came to investigate. They’re not shadows, they’re as real as you and me. This is Pippa James and Lily –”

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

Ben turns back around slowly to see Sammy staring at one of the women with a thunderous look in his eyes. It’s almost angry. It’s most definitely hurt, like a wounded animal. Ben blinks in surprise but finds himself whirling back to face the woman when she snaps back.

“Oh, don’t give me that look, Stevens,” she very nearly snarls. She’s about Ben’s height, with short dark hair and slight features that shouldn’t look menacing yet somehow do on her. “I could ask you the same question.”

“This is Lily,” Emily interrupts with a somewhat timid look on her face as her eyes flicker concernedly between Sammy and Lily. “Lily Wright.”


	9. Chapter Eight

“Wright,” Ben repeats, something horrible settling in the pit of his stomach. “Like –”

“Like Jack Wright,” Lily is almost seething as she stares directly at Sammy, her gaze hard and unrelenting like she’s issuing him a challenge.

“Shut up,” Sammy says with not quite equal venom, his voice too breathless for that. “Don’t –”

“You’re such a fucking coward,” Lily says, her voice less steely but just as much fire. “I’m sure these people don’t even know who you really are.”

“Seriously, shut up,” Sammy says and Ben can hear the panic in his voice. He has no idea what Lily means, but knows that until something heinous comes out, he’s on Sammy’s side no matter what. Sammy deserves that from him. 

“Can someone explain what’s happening here?” Ben asks, somehow more anxious now than he's been yet. Mary nods fervently in agreement.

“I – I mean, you’re both journalists working on a story about this place,” Emily says, though her uncertainty makes it sound more like a question than a statement. “Are you – is this some sort of competition?”

“You could say that,” Lily’s lip twists up derisively. Sammy doesn’t respond, and Ben can see that his clenched fist is almost shaking. He reaches toward Sammy but Sammy jerks away from him.

Ben falls back on his heels, almost hurt. 

“Don’t,” the other woman – Pippa, Ben remembers – says quietly to Lily. “Don’t deflect and play mind games, we’re all in a very scary place right now and I don’t think that’s the best tactic when we need these people’s help.”

“I don’t need anyone’s help, especially not _his_ ,” Lily juts her chin in Sammy’s direction with a scoff. “No one needs his help, he can barely help himself.”

“How about you shut the fuck up about things you don’t understand?” Sammy says, his voice quiet but laced with barbed wire, the complete opposite of the gentleness that Ben associates Sammy with. Then again, Ben hasn’t known him for very long, even though a few days in this place feels like years.

“ _I_ don’t understand?” Lily laughs, but not because anything is funny. “He was _my_ brother. I think I understand far better than you.”

“Don’t –” Sammy starts, and something horrible slides into place for Ben.

Sammy hadn’t bolted from the campfire until Ben mentioned Jack by name.

“Both of you stop,” Pippa says, a pleading look on her face mainly directed at Lily. “You’re wrong, this _isn’t_ a competition. You _both_ care about Jack, more than anyone else does or ever will. You don’t have to scream at each other over who loved him more.”

Ben’s eyes go to Sammy without realizing, thinking of the notebook. Jack referenced in more than one of his journal entries someone who he referred to only as a messy letter _S_ that Ben thought could’ve just as easily been a _Z_. He hadn’t given that much thought before now, though it seems like that was a huge oversight on his part. 

“Oh, I think it still is,” Lily raises an eyebrow. “I’m his sister, yet you’re on this fancy official expedition? Whoop dee freakin’ doo, Stevens. What, did you tell your sob story to Dr. Potter here so she’d let you come along despite the fact that your journalistic credentials are sadly lacking? I mean, shock jock radio is hardly conductive with this kind of hard-hitting journalistic endeavor.”

“I – I –” Emily stammers as Lily stares her down. “There was no sob story, he – he’s a great journalist. You didn’t interview with me, Ms. Wright. Lily. How can you be mad about –”

“Because it’s what she does,” Sammy interrupts with a fierce look at Lily, though his eyes drift apologetically over to Emily. “She always thinks the world has wronged her over something or other, Emily. No need to be offended.”

“Please, you interviewing for this thing is a joke,” Lily rolls her eyes. “I mean, come on, you’ve written what? Two pieces since Jack disappeared? From that apartment you’re holed up in Colorado of all fucking places?”

“Oh, and what have you done?” Sammy bites back. “You and your stupid fucking podcast –”

“My stupid fucking podcast means a hell of a lot to plenty of people, so you can shut the fuck up,” Lily tells him, eyes burning.

“Maybe we should just all calm down –” Pippa starts, making brief eye contact with Emily and Ben as if to ask for their help in peacekeeping this rapidly escalating situation.

“Why don’t you two just maybe explain to those of us who aren’t, uh, as in the know as the two of you…” Ben struggles for a proper way to say this, but a glare from Lily shuts him down.

“What, you all thought he was legit?” Lily laughs. “Sammy Stevens is a former trash shock jock – saying he’s here for a story is a laugh and a half. I know what he’s really here to do. He’s here to mope and feel guilty, and maybe hope he winds up stuck here forever, too -"

“Lily,” Sammy takes a step toward her, a venomous look on his face, and Ben puts a hand out to hold him back, even though it remains limp in the air. “You weren’t even _there_. I was always there, _always_ there for Jack, you were the one who –”

“You were _there_ for him?” Lily chuckles derisively. “A little too well, as I recall. You enabled his bullshit for years, made him think it was okay to believe all this crap, and look where it got him! Where it got both of you!”

“Hey!” Ben finally cuts in with some venom of us own, and both Sammy and Lily are distracted enough to look at him with surprise. “Seriously guys, can you stop screaming at each other for two seconds?”

“I think we’d all appreciate a little quieter volume,” Troy says, giving everyone a meaningful look. “We don’t want our shouts to –”

“Oh, please, this place is about as dangerous a merry go round,” Lily says and Ben gapes at her. Thankfully, it’s Pippa who elbows Lily with an annoyed, almost furious expression.

“Don’t put on a show, jackass!” Pippa hisses. “This place is dangerous as hell and we both know it. And as much as you hate to admit, there’s something _not right_ here.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to buy into my brother’s crackpot delusions,” Lily sticks to her guns without a hint of shame or regret, and Ben doesn’t even blame Sammy for shouting again.

“Have you seen where we fucking are, Lily?” Sammy gestures around them. “This isn’t reality! Time and space are all fucked up and you’re still on your high horse –”

“Oh, because _you’ve_ swallowed your pride for even a moment in your goddamn life?” Lily leans forward and Pippa takes a hold of her shoulder and Ben almost steps in front of Sammy just in case. “Don’t think that just because you’ve become just as deluded as he was doesn’t mean shit, Stevens. You’re tricking yourself into thinking Jack could still be alive –”

“He is alive!” Sammy says back, but he sounds more like a scared kid than a man speaking with absolute certainty. His doubtful eyes meet Ben’s just for a moment, and Sammy bites his lip. “I – Ben saw him!”

Ben almost backs into Sammy as Lily turns her venomous gaze on him. “How old are you? Sixteen? Or are you just deluded, too?”

Sammy’s voice very nearly breaks when he says “Jack is –”

“Dead,” Lily finishes, and her voice loses its edge. It doesn’t quite waver, it certainly doesn’t have any sympathy, but there’s a terrible mourning finality to it that she hasn’t had before. “Accept it.”

Sammy shifts backwards, shoulders drawing into his chest, and with a small, humorless laugh, says “No thanks.”

Ben reaches out for Sammy, but Sammy’s already leaving the fire again. Not in a rage, not in a huff, but with a resigned silence.

He's gone, and the rest of them are left staring at one another. 

“What the hell was that?” Mary asks quietly, and the set lines of Lily’s face don’t change.

“That was a fucking coward,” Lily says, and now only that Sammy’s not there does Ben notice the tears in the corners of her eyes. “Never could face the truth. About anything.”

“Well, you weren’t helping!” Ben finds himself saying with more fervor than he meant. “He’s – I mean, you’re both obviously going through a lot right now – how did – I mean, you both – Jack –”

“Pip, we should go, try not to bother this fine group of scientists anymore,” Lily says, eyes on the fire, voice careful and measured but revealing far more pain and vulnerability than she had when Sammy could hear her. “We can make our own way.”

“Lily –” Pippa tries to touch Lily’s shoulder but Lily steps out of her way.

"Don’t go,” Emily says, though her voice is strained. “This place isn’t pleasant, regardless of what else you might think about it, and we all have a better chance of making it out alive together. Before – before Sammy got here – you said that there were certain parts of the forest that were just pure black. Stay with us. Wait with us, we need all the help we can get finding the other member of our party, and – and I guess Sammy now, too….”

“Sammy,” Ben says, a bolt of fear running through his spine worse than any black lightning. “Oh shit, I – I’ll go after him.”

“It’s useless, he won’t come back after I just spilled the sordid details,” Lily sounds half-regretful. “Besides, he’s not here to find a way out, if you know what I mean.”

“He’s here to find Jack,” Ben says slowly, and Lily meets his eye when she nods. “I – he can’t do that alone. He needs our help. I’ll – I’ll find him.”

“I’ll come with you,” Troy rises to his feet, and surprisingly, Lily is the one to stop him.

“No, he’ll feel like he’s being attacked if you do that,” Lily says and Emily half-glares at her.

“I think you started that particularly train of thought in his head with all of your screaming,” Emily’s voice is much tighter and meaner than Ben’s ever heard it.

“I lose my temper with him,” Lily says without an ounce of regret. “And he deserves it, so I won’t apologize. Just let the kid go, I’m sure he has the best chance of not having his head chewed off.”

“If I can even find him and he’s not –” Ben chokes back his next words, swallowing hard. “I _have_ to find him.”

Ben is about to bolt in the same direction Sammy left in, but a thought strikes him and he quickly digs around in his backpack with a few confused looks but Emily’s is sad and knowing.

“The hell is that?” Lily asks, almost in a whisper, when Ben pulls out Jack’s notebook.

“It was your brother’s,” Ben says, curling it into his chest protectively. “He’s alive. He saved my life. And now I have to go save Sammy’s.”

Ben doesn’t give Lily time to respond, already rushing away from the campsite, hoping and praying that Sammy had only made it down the one hill like before.

No such luck. Ben’s turned around in the instant, and although he can still see the roaring fire in the distance, it seems to disintegrate almost immediately, flickering only in his periphery.

He quickly realizes that he won’t be able to find his way back to the rest of the team after only a few steps outside of its warmth. He can’t make his feet turn around either. He’s roaming through the forest with very little conscious control, his brain feeling like molasses.

Ben only stops himself, with great effort on his part, when he realizes what the danger here is – he’s alone, in the Void, carrying Jack Wright’s notebook. That’s what the Shadowmaker wants. The Shadowmaker could be leading him somewhere, like straight into his evil lair.

Ben has to make a deeply conscious effort to decide which way his feet turn next, and the harder it is to walk in a certain direction, that’s the way Ben goes. It feels like he’s trudging along for hours through thick viscous lava making his feet burn and chafe.

Still, Ben persists, hoping that the path of most resistance is the path to –

“Sammy?” Ben whispers when he hears footsteps, and a horrific worry runs through his head that it’s the Shadowmaker, that all of this had been some horrid trick to lead Ben straight to him.

Then Ben catches a glimpse of the back of Sammy’s shoulder, and he tries his best to run forward even though his legs won’t let him.

Ben squeezes his eyes closed and wills himself to _move_ , and only when he plows straight into Sammy and topples them both over does the resistance disappear and Ben can finally relax.

He shudders with relief, glad to feel Sammy’s beating heart right beneath him.

“What – Ben –?” Sammy chokes out and Ben quickly rolls over to get off of him. “What’d you do that for?”

“Worked well enough with the lightning,” Ben shrugs, half-smiling as he offers a hand to help Sammy up. It’s only then he notices how hard Sammy’s shaking. “Are you – I mean, I know it’s stupid to ask if you’re okay –”

“S’fucking cold,” Sammy says, but he takes Ben’s hand and Ben hauls him to his feet. Sammy stops making eye contact the second he does, looking out into the darkened forest around then. “Go – go back to the others, Ben, I’ll be okay.”

“No, I really don’t think you will,” Ben says, not leaving Sammy any room to bullshit him. “Lily was way out of line. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I know it was unfair. We all want you on the team, we all want you to make it home with us. We don't care about shock jock radio, or journalistic credentials, or - or anything else. We’re your friends!”

“We barely know each other,” Sammy mutters, looking at the ground, and Ben grabs Sammy’s chin and forces Sammy to look at him.

“Time isn’t the same here,” Ben says slowly. “I knew I wanted to be your friend from the second I met you on the plane, but these past few days? However long we’ve spent in this place, whether it’s a day or a year? Sammy, I feel like I’ve known you forever. And I care about you, and don’t want you out here alone trying to – to – _Jesus_ , you’re shaking.”

“I just need to find him,” Sammy says, a violent shiver wracking his body as he turns away from Ben to wipe at his eyes. “This is worthless if I don’t – if I can’t – God, I think I’m still hallucinating. Maybe all of this is a hallucination.”

“It’s not,” Ben reassures him, and reaches down to take a hold of Sammy’s wrist but Sammy jolts his hand away like Ben’s freezing cold. “Please, explain to me what’s going on and I can help you.”

“No one can help me,” Sammy shakes his head, his eyes closing. Miserable lines form in the creases of his cheeks. “Go back, Ben. I’m sure you’ll make it out if you find everyone else. You can write a paper about this. Lily can be the one to write the fucking story. I – I just need to see him again, I don’t care what happens to me afterwards –”

“I can help you find him, find - find Jack,” Ben says, desperate to try and get Sammy to understand that he’s not in this alone. “ _We_ can help you, Sammy, just come with me –”

“He’s my fiancé, Ben,” Sammy says, so quiet that Ben can barely hear, but he does. The bottom drops out of Ben’s stomach as he stares at the misery etched onto Sammy’s face. “Why the hell would you want me to go back with you? Lily’s right – I’m, I’m a fake and a fraud, nothing more than a trash shock jock that couldn’t own up to my own identity and couldn’t save –”

“Sammy,” Ben says, heart thumping, no idea how Sammy will respond to this as he reaches into his checkered jacket. “I have Jack’s notebook.”

That makes Sammy look at Ben, jaw dropping open and blinking rapidly. “I – what?”

“Jack’s notebook,” Ben says, holding out the notebook between them like a peace offering, like something he can use to understand Sammy, to get Sammy to understand him. “I’ve had it since before we even got to Alaska. I got it in the mail. Why else would I get that if I couldn’t help you save him?”

“That’s _his,”_ Sammy stares at the thing with shock and a little revulsion, like it’s going to bite at him if he reaches out to touch it. “How can you have that?”

“I have no fucking idea,” Ben almost laughs, “but I think I know _why_ now. So I can save him. So I can help _you_ save him. You and Lily and whoever else in this forest that’s here because of Jack Wright. We can save him, Sammy, if you’ll just let us help you.”

“We – we –” Sammy’s panicked eyes go from the book to Ben, asking for some kind of answer or explanation, but Ben can’t give him one.

He can give him something, though. Ben pulls the notebook back, maintaining eye contact with Sammy and trying to be calm when Sammy’s losing his grip. Ben flips open to the journal entry pages from Jack’s last few weeks.

“No phone reception so S isn’t happy,” Ben reads, not looking up to see Sammy’s reaction, paging through to find any mention of Sammy, knowing he's missing so many. “S would say I’m being paranoid, but he’s not here right now. Hallucinations common with light, keep seeing S begging me to come home. Tried to get a message to S but the phone is completely dead. Don’t sleep or eat anymore, can hear S’s voice in my head. So worried. I miss him so fucking much. Don’t think I’ll make it out. Don’t regret much, only that I couldn’t be there for S. Hope he knows I tried to get back to him but this place won’t let me go.”

Ben’s voice wavers, his own eyes threatening him with tears. When he looks up, Sammy’s silently crying, tear tracks on his cheeks.

“I – I’ve been getting messages,” Ben says slowly as he turns the final page. “Written in at the end. Warnings, directions – they’re in his writing.”

“I – that’s – that’s some – some kind of trick,” Sammy says, clearly struggling with words as he shivers. “How can Jack –”

Ben gingerly flips to the last page of the notebook, and his breath catches when he sees a new note, one he vaguely remembers reading before he arrived.

“ _We were going to get married_ ,” Ben swallows, his voice wobbling, “ _at Christmas, your favorite holiday. Christmas Eve wedding somewhere freezing cold. Outdoor ceremony. I don’t know how we agreed on that, maybe just because it was funny, or you were making fun of me for being from California. Honeymoon over New Years in some country that never gets below 90 to make it up to me. I think about that most days, whatever days mean here. Don’t worry – I’ll see you again, sooner than you think_.”

At some point, Sammy started to stumble tentatively over to Ben, reading over his shoulder, his eyes zoning in on the messy scrawl that Ben was certain he recognized.

Ben remembered reading that in his apartment and thinking Jack had been writing that out of loneliness, a desperation to get home, and Ben hadn’t given much thought to the person he was addressing and if that person would ever see the words. He remembered feeling a pang of sympathy for whoever Jack Wright had left behind, but had never considered the repercussions of that.

When Sammy speaks, it’s very low, but there’s a watery laugh that accompanies it. “How the fuck can you read his handwriting? I’ve known him ten years and can hardly make a word out.”

He splutters out a half laugh, half sob, and Ben leans into him and puts an arm around him. Sammy, tentative and unsure, hugs back loosely.

“New goal,” Ben says, putting as much certainty into his voice as he can. “We find Jack. We find the rest of our team. Maybe we’ll even find Pete while we’re at it. I mean, he’s less important, obviously…”

Sammy laughs, almost genuine through his tears, and Ben hugs him tighter.


	10. Chapter Nine

There’s no firelight anywhere to be seen, which leaves Ben leading Sammy in what he thinks is north based on his internal gut instinct. He actually has no clue. They’re walking with blind hope.

Sammy’s been very quiet, and a few sniffles tell Ben he’s not entirely gotten through anything that just happened. But then again, how could he? Ben can’t imagine how much it would hurt, losing your fiancé to something as otherworldly and unforgivable as the Void.

Let alone what it must have felt like to have no one know about that hurt. Ben isn’t sure if Sammy just didn’t tell the expedition team, or if _no one_ knew. Ben certainly hadn’t known Jack had a fiancé or that he was gay, and Ben was basically Jack’s biggest fan.

With a sidelong look at Sammy, Ben decides he may as well tell him that in the hopes that Sammy will somehow know that Ben understands.

“Jack is basically my hero, you know,” Ben says, quiet as can be. Sammy doesn’t respond but he also doesn’t turn away, so Ben figures that’s good enough permission to keep talking. “I read everything he ever wrote. Scoured the internet for interviews with him. Ordered a signed copy of _Shadows in the Dark_ and sometimes I take it out to stare at his signature and sigh dreamily.”

He thinks Sammy’s smiling, even if he’s looking at the ground and not at Ben.

“Most of my work credits his in some way,” Ben keeps going. “My thesis adviser kept telling me that Jack Wright wasn’t a credible source, and I think I told him to go fuck himself. Then I got a new thesis adviser.”

“He would’ve liked you,” Sammy says after a moment’s silence. “You’re – you’re a lot alike.”

“Really?” Ben can’t help but beam at the compliment even in the gravity of the situation they’re in. “How so?”

Sammy’s eyes meet his for half a second, a glitter to them that Ben hasn’t seen since Lily Wright appeared at their campfire. “So fucking stubborn.”

Ben grins, a warm feeling passing through his body. Ben locks their arms together, and Sammy doesn’t seem to be shivering anymore.

“How long had you been together?” Ben asks, a bit tentative, not sure if they’re close enough for this yet. “When he –”

“A really long time,” Sammy admits, and his pace slows slightly, just enough that Ben notices. “He– he used to produce radio, before his whole academic paranormal thing took off. No idea how that happened, but then that became his full time job. He got obsessive. The Void always freaked me out even though I didn’t believe it was real, and when he said he was going to investigate…”

“He went to Colorado when it appeared there,” Ben says, biting his lip as he thinks about what Lily had insinuated. “You moved there, after. To Denver. Didn’t you.”

It’s not a question. Sammy nods anyway.

“I followed him,” Sammy says, lines of misery and regret etched on his face. “It was too late. The Void was gone by the time I got there. I walked through that piece of forest that he disappeared into ten, twenty, fifty times. Never a trace of him. And no news from anyone else about the Void’s reappearance. I heard about Nancy Fletcher and was going to come up here anyway – but then I stumbled onto Emily’s investigation, and figured that if I was going to save Jack, I could do with an expert or two.”

“We’ll save him,” Ben says, squeezing Sammy’s arm with his own. “We will.”

“If we don’t…” Sammy clears his throat almost painfully. “If we don’t, if we find a way out before then – just leave me here. There’s nothing left for me out there.”

“There’s nothing in Denver?” Ben asks and Sammy laughs bitterly.

“A shitty apartment that I never leave,” Sammy says quietly, and Ben can practically hear the years of loneliness in his voice.

Ben’s heart hurts for him.

“Do you see something up ahead?” Ben asks, half deflection and half because if he squints, there seems to be an opening in the denseness of the trees that surround them on all sides.

“I – yeah, like maybe a – a clearing, or…” Sammy leans forward slightly to see and Ben speeds up their pace to get there quicker.

“It’s the path!” Ben says excitedly as he peaks his head out through the brush to see the narrow walking trail they’d left behind hours – days – weeks? Ben can’t tell how long ago. “I think the same –”

Ben takes a step forward, out of the trees and onto the gravelly trail, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

Ben feels the world twist around him and he tries to shout out, but he can hear Sammy shout his name as well. A familiar nausea sweeps through Ben’s entire body and he screws his eyes shut to block out the pain, but the pain doesn’t stop.

Ben’s dizzy as hell when he opens his eyes, and it only gets worse.

The world is upside-down.

Literally. Ben’s lying spread-eagle on the forest floor, but the ground is like a ceiling now, a magnetic ceiling that Ben’s clinging to that could flick him off like a gnat at any given moment. The forest is spread out beneath him, tree branches like a huge net that won’t catch him.  

Ben scrambles to grab at a tree trunk; the trees under him create a huge swath of darkened branches that Ben could fall into at any time and they won't be much protection from the greatest fucking expanse of nothing beneath it –

Ben tries to call for Sammy but his voice isn’t working, his throat burning every time he tries. His arms are similarly useless. Ben’s so glad he’d had the forethought to put Jack’s notebook in his jacket, and clings tightly to the tree to press his chest against it so the notebook can’t fall into the Void either.

There’s an enormous pressure on Ben’s head that causes tears to form without Ben meaning them to, and a buzzing sound that makes it impossible for Ben to even hear his own voice when he finally manages to unstick his throat and call for Sammy.

Despite the fact that Sammy had been next to him before, he’s gone now without a trace of him anywhere.

There’s no one, Ben’s alone again, all alone and about to die –

In the midst of Ben looking wildly around this new topsy-turvy world for Sammy, he catches a glimpse of a figure crawling toward him, through the expanses of tree trunks and roots and pine needles, and he almost calls for Sammy again –

Until he realizes that it’s not Sammy, that it’s _Pete,_ a gash on his cheek and desperation in his eyes and Ben doesn’t think he’ll ever be happier to see Pete Meyers as long as he lives.

“ _Pete_!” Ben tries to yell for him, and manages to move himself to the other side of the tree trunk, stretching his arm out as far as it will go to reach Pete, whose muddy, grimy hands manage to take a hold of Ben’s fingers.

Instantaneously, Ben feels the world tip again, but not back into position – instead, it’s like a tilt-a-whirl has tipped them on their side and Ben crashes into Pete as the world spins and spins around them. They’re teacups at the county fair; this is every ride that ever made Ben vomit up his nacho cheese.

Ben feels Pete wrap an arm around him and Ben squeezes Pete’s torso to his, tight as he can, so they can’t lose each other, the notebook pressed between them.

He thinks he hears something through the buzzing, and a few seconds later, realizes its Pete’s voice. “ _What the fuck is happening? What the fuck is happening?”_

Ben tries to yell something back about a sliding scale being tipped on its side, but Pete’s never been one for metaphors. Besides, he won’t be able to hear Ben’s voice anyway.

Ben sees light in the corner of his periphery – something small. A nightlight, or a lantern. Maybe a flashlight.

Then the world flips back.

The buzzing stops, the pressure on all sides is gone. Ben gasps in relief as he realizes that his and Pete’s chests are still pressed together.

He opens his eyes and finds them both splayed out on the forest floor, only this time the world is right-side up, the sky above them and ground below them. Ben could cry with relief.

“Holy shit,” Pete stares up at him, the shock on his face leaving no room for derision. “Holy _shit_. Ben, what _was_ that?”

“I don’t know,” Ben shakes his head, feeling his jacket to make sure that Jack’s notebook is still there. He feels it against his heart, and his shoulders droop with relief.

“Ben? _Pete_?”

Ben whirls around at the sound of Sammy’s voice.

Sammy's behind them, sprawled on the forest floor and half-propped against a tree, a nasty cut on his jaw.

And Lily Wright is plastered against him, at least for half a second that Ben sees before she almost shoves him away in a struggle to get up. It doesn’t seem to be out of disgust with her proximity to Sammy, since she’s collapsed onto the ground a few yards away and vomiting something up a moment later.

“You’re okay,” Ben pulls himself off of Pete and stumbles toward Sammy once it becomes clear Lily is just throwing up and nothing else more serious. He falls into his knees next to Sammy to hug him, and Sammy hugs back.

“The hell was that?” Lily asks when she stands, her shoulders shaking.

“The Shadowmaker, I bet,” Mary’s voice says from behind Ben. He nearly jumps out of his skin when he turns to see the rest of his friends sprawled out on the ground just on the periphery of his vision, Pippa leaning on Mary’s shoulder and Emily and Troy with their legs tangled together. “Some sort of trick.”

“A trick to bring us all together again?” Emily asks as she stands, pulling Troy up along with her. She bites her lip hard. “Shouldn’t he want us separated? Divide and conquer?”

“Unless he wants to finish us off all at once,” Troy says grimly, and Ben thinks he might go throw up next to Lily.

“What the fuck is this Shadowmaker thing?” Pete interrupts, and Ben’s displeased to see that his annoying tone has come back, his shock and fear no longer scaring his worse tendencies out of his system.

“The monster in charge of this place,” Ben explains when Pippa gives him a curious look as well. “That’s what Jack calls him, anyway. And he’s after this.”

He pulls Jack’s notebook out of his checkered jacket, relieved to actually look at it and see it’s still whole and full of Jack’s words. “Maybe that’s what this world-rearranging act was about. I think he wanted me to drop it.”

“Well then, shouldn’t we get it and _us_ the hell out of here?” Pete asks like it’s obvious, even though he’s been out of the loop for however long he disappeared for. “I mean, c’mon – I’ve got all the research I need, Stevens has probably been recording this whole thing, Emily’s got her soil samples – and I don’t know who the fuck you two are, but I assume you’ve got what you need too, let’s _get out_.”

“We’re –” Lily starts, a growl on her face, but Emily cuts her off with a warning look. Surprisingly, Lily gives her a sheepish look back and stops talking. Ben trades a look with Sammy, who looks mystified with the whole exchange.

“We can’t leave yet,” Emily says, her eyes landing on Sammy for a half a second before turning back to Pete. “Jack Wright is somewhere in Void, and we need to get him out of here.”

Sammy blinks at Emily, the look on his face softening to one of affection, and Ben puts his hand on Sammy’s arm.

“Jack Wright? Hasn’t he been missing for like, three years?” Pete’s laugh is derisive. Ben's stomach turns. “Who gives a shit?”

“We all do,” Ben glares at Pete with as much venom as he can, but he doesn’t even know if Pete heard him over the sounds of protest of everyone else in the group, neither of them as loud as Sammy or Lily.

“Have you ever had an ounce of empathy for another human being in your entire life?” Sammy asks Pete with a barbed wire snarl on his face.

Lily is much more succinct and biting as she says “Shut the fuck up about my brother, _guy.”_

Ben catches the eye contact that Sammy and Lily make for just a second before they both tear their eyes away and stare in opposite directions, but Ben knows it was at the very least a moment of solidarity in hating someone else more than they hated each other.

“We have to try,” Troy says, his voice soft and gentle. “I mean, his sister is here. And…”

He looks over at Sammy with a small smile on his face, but Sammy only stares at his hands. Ben quickly places one of his own hands overtop Sammy’s.

“Let’s make a plan of action,” Mary says with a determined look in her eye as she glares at Pete. “Maybe if Lily and Pippa could tell us a bit more about what they’ve seen – and we compile information – I mean, Ben saw him. He’s here. We can’t just leave him behind. If someone helped Tim, if someone brought Tim back to me….well, I’d want to pass the favor on. Jack's got family, too."

Sammy doesn’t look up even as Mary’s eyes travel from Lily to him. Lily clears her throat.

“Look – Ben, right?” Lily asks, and Ben nods, getting a little closer to Sammy for if he needs a protective shield. “I’m almost positive my brother’s dead – and if he’s not, he’s not in fucking Alaska.”

“Then why are you here? Why are _you_ in Alaska?” Ben asks, and Lily bites her lip, her eyes flickering like there’s a war going on in her head. She clearly doesn’t have an answer for him.

Pippa does, though, and it’s with sympathetic eyes and a soft touch on Lily’s arm. “She wants to believe. She wants to believe that he’s out here.”

“Then let’s try,” Ben says, looking her square in the eye. More than a little pleading filters into his voice, but he’s not too embarrassed by that. When Lily looks at him it’s with some determination of her own, and not a determination to make Sammy’s life harder.

“We can try,” Lily says, voice tight. “I don’t know if we’ll succeed, but – if you’re all willing to try.”

“I still think this is a dumb idea,” Pete declares. “But I’m not going off on my own again, and I’m clearly outvoted so – I’m in.”

“Your magnanimity will live on for generations, Pete,” Ben says, suppressing the overwhelming urge to roll his eyes but Pete’s not worth the energy. “If you’ll all excuse me for a moment, I need…to throw up. BRB.”

Ben stumbles away from the trees where everyone is sitting so no one will have to smell his vomit, since he’s entirely sure the smell of Lily’s is what got him in the end.

He doesn’t realize that Sammy’s followed him until he feels a few pats on his back after he wipes his mouth.

“Alright?” Sammy asks as Ben sits back on his heels, the nausea gone but his body still feeling more than a little out of sorts.

“Good enough,” Ben says, and he and Sammy trade grimaces. “How about you?”

Sammy shrugs, his lips drawn in a tight line. “I – I mean, I appreciate everyone’s….willingness. Without you even telling them – and, well, thank you. For _not_ telling them.”

“I wouldn’t,” Ben says, looking up at Sammy with wide eyes. “That’s your story to tell, not mine.”

“Well, I appreciate it,” Sammy says, and reaches a hand out to help pull Ben to his feet. “You’re – you’re a good friend, Ben.”

Warmth floods through Ben’s body at Sammy’s blush, and Ben knocks their elbows together as they walk back to the others together.

“I’m sorry no one knew,” Ben says quietly, just before they reenter earshot of their friends, “but thank you for telling me.”

Emily greets them immediately as they get close enough. Lily, Pippa, and Mary are talking quietly together while Troy examines a map that must have been in his back pocket. Pete looks entirely useless as he splays out, leaning against a tree with his head lolling.

“Is there anything else in the notebook?” Emily asks, eyes flickering from Ben’s face to Sammy’s. “Anything from – Jack?”

Ben quickly flips to the notebook’s final pages, and shakes his head. The last thing there is his message for Sammy, but Ben keeps the notebook open so that Sammy can read it again. He feels Sammy’s shoulder press against his.

“Who do you think sent it to you?” Emily asks as she takes the notebook from Ben’s hands, examining it as if it could give her an answer. “I mean – could it have been Jack?”

“What?” Sammy asks, almost a little panicked but Ben places a comforting hand on his elbow.

“No way,” Ben shakes his head fervently. “I got it a week before we even got to Alaska, and I don’t think the Void has UPS.”

“But he’s sending you messages – and who else would have it?” Emily asks, mostly looking at Sammy. “I mean – well- you knew Jack. Would he give his notebook to anyone?”

Sammy clears his throat more than once. “I – no, no he wouldn’t. Probably not even to me. But that doesn’t matter much, as he was clearly in the Void when he – when he lost track of it.”

“Maybe he gave it to someone,” Ben says slowly. “Handed it off to someone like Tim or, or Debbie. Someone who got out, and….told them to send it to me? But how would he know…”

“He seems to know quite a lot about what we’re doing,” Emily's voice is slow and purposeful, and she isn't quite looking at Sammy. “I mean – the directions…”

“Unless it isn’t Jack,” Sammy says, screwing his eyes shut and his voice taking on a horrible helpless quality. “Unless this is all a fucking trap –if this Shadowmaker fuck is a mind reader…”

“But he _wants_ this thing,” Ben says, desperately trying to retain a piece of Jack in the narrative they’re creating here.

“Unless that warning is a fake, too,” Sammy says, eyebrows knotted together, and they all stare at one another in silence, not sure how to proceed from there.

“So,” Lily interrupts as she glances over at their trio from where she’s sitting with an apprehensive sigh. “That’s Jack’s notebook, huh? The infamous notebook?”

“The infamous notebook,” Sammy replies, not meeting her eye as she steps toward them. He steps half behind Ben, presumably to deflect attention from himself, and Ben’s more than happy to stay in front of him.

“And you really think – what? Jack’s leaving messages for you?” Lily isn’t quite derisive, more disbelieving than anything.

“He is,” Ben says, trying not to sound too defensive as he flips to the notebook’s last pages. “I’ll show you – wait, hold up a second – guys, there’s something new!”

“What is it?” Sammy’s almost panicked as he leans over to read over Ben’s shoulder, but his voice mellows out into one of sentimentality as he reads. “ _Bro, this_ _would go a lot faster if you two quit arguing – probably why our first show failed in the end.”_

Sammy glances over at Lily with a barely contained look on his face, though Ben isn’t sure if Sammy’s about to laugh or cry.

Lily puts a hand over her mouth, and it stifles a half-sob. “Bro - God, I hate him."

"What -?" Ben asks and Lily's eyes are soft for the first time. 

"He got  _so_ annoyed when I'd call him _kid_ ," Lily shakes her head. "I think he started with sis before giving it up and becoming the frat boy he was. God, he'd use it all the time when we argued..."

“Especially during our first show,” Sammy says, and when he and Lily look at each other, the venom between them seems to dissipate, just for a moment, before they both look away.

Lily very nearly smiles when she looks at Ben, though, which Ben thinks is quite the achievement, all things considered.


	11. Chapter Ten

“The only landmark I can think of that might still be here is the river that goes through the terrain here,” Troy explains from the front of their hiking group as he peers down at his map. Ben thinks the map is pretty useless here, but they have to do something and don’t exactly have any better leads on where to go next. “If we can find the river, I can see which direction it’s flowing and we can try to follow it. I don’t know if that will take us closer to Jack, but we might have a bit more of our bearings.”

“Who’s to say there’s even a river anymore?” Mary asks, but Pippa shushes her.

“There has to still be a river, there can’t just _stop b_ eing a river,” a bit of panic laces in Pippa’s voice, and Lily squeezes her elbow. The two of them are the closest to Sammy and Ben, in their regular position of dead last on the hiking trail. Ben thinks maybe some more distance should be put between Sammy and Lily but this is how it’s all shaken out. Thankfully, they don’t seem to be experienced hikers either.

“Space isn’t as fucked up as time,” Emily says slowly, “and this is the only idea we have. So we’re following Troy on this one. Lily and Pippa, I know I’m not the leader of your expedition but –”

“Dr. Potter, we’d be more than happy to follow your lead here,” Lily says, with more warmth than Ben expected from her.

“Oh stop hitting on her, Lily,” Sammy grouches from behind her and Lily turns to give him the finger. “You’re ridiculous.”

“Ben’s practically holding your hand,” Lily snipes back with a roll of her eyes, and Ben looks down to realize he does have a grip on Sammy’s wrist. Sammy tries to jolt his hand away but that only strengthens Ben’s grip and his resolve to keep holding on. “I’m putting my recorder on again. I’m willing to bet you’ve barely paid attention to yours.”

Sammy gives Lily a tight smile as he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out his handheld recorder. Sammy peers at it for a moment. “Still recording. I have absolutely no idea when I turned it on, but it was a while ago.”

“That shouldn’t be possible, it should be dead by now,” Lily says suspiciously, but eventually just shrugs even though Pippa’s still squinting curiously over at it.

“It’ll be interesting to look at the length of your footage, if we…I mean, _once_ we make it out of here,” Pippa finishes a little sheepishly.

“What, don’t tell me you believe their bullshit theory about time?” Lily raises her eyebrow at Pippa, who just grimaces.

“Not sure what to believe anymore,” Pippa's voice is a little smaller than usual.

“Time’s so horrifically fucked here, who knows when we’ll get out,” Pete muses from up front with Troy. At least there’s a sizable distance between himself and Ben now. That’s good for Ben’s blood pressure. “Maybe it’ll be a hundred years in the future. Or, if time’s _really_ crazy, a hundred years in the past.”

“I think that’s less of a worry than _where_ we’d end up,” Mary says slowly. “I mean, Tim was in the Void for such a short time, so he was still in Georgia. But if this place really does move, we might not even be in Alaska on the other side.”

Sammy makes a contemplative noise as he looks at his recorder, and Ben looks at him questioningly.

“It’s just, if we make it out with a recording, that’s _proof_ ,” Sammy says quietly, so only Ben can hear. “Jack’s notebook – that’s a kind of proof, too. Maybe that’s the difference between people who disappear for a few weeks and people gone for years on end. There’s not enough time for them to get any proof.”

“What, this shadow fuck won’t let us out because we have a few recordings?” Lily snorts. “You know how insane you sound, Stevens?”

“He makes a good point,” Emily says, her voice quiet and much more serious than Lily’s. “I mean, the Shadowmaker wants the notebook. Maybe if we ditched all of our proof – the notebook, the recordings – we’d find a way out more easily. Then again, even if we escape, we might be endangering people who come here in the future…”

“Maybe it’s too late no matter what,” Sammy says, and Ben elbows him when he hears the glumness in his voice.

“Shh,” Ben is insistent. “You’re a cynic. We’re making it out of here.”

“I know we gotta find Jack first,” Troy says from up front. “But when we do – I mean, if this forest really is brand spankin’ new – how _do_ we get out? If this Void roves around, will we be left behind when it moves?”

“No,” Ben shakes his head. “Jack disappeared in Colorado and he was here. Debbie disappeared in Ontario and she was – well, hold up a second. She _was_ found in Ontario. Years ago.”

Ben’s grip on Sammy gets tighter as he turns to him, trying to scramble within his own mind to fit the puzzle pieces of this together. Sammy stares down at him, forehead crinkled with concern.

“If time is really all happening at once here,” Ben says slowly, “and I really did save Debbie and send her back to reality –it happened when we touched hands. And in my hallucination, Jack touched my hand and brought me back. Maybe that’s the key here.”

“There are eight of us,” Pete says blankly, and Ben entertains a nice visual of stringing Pete up a tree. “So who’s touching all of us?”

“Dirty,” Sammy mutters under his breath and Ben cracks a grin.

“Other than that,” Mary casts Sammy a sidelong look, “he makes a decent point. Who would have to touch us? For an escape to be possible? I mean, Jack didn’t save Ben from the Void, just his hallucination. And if Ben _did_ save Debbie, he obviously wasn’t aware he had that power to do so before.”

“Maybe Jack will have answers when we find him,” Emily says, the hope in her voice almost infectious. “No use thinking about escape until then. And from the looks of things in his notebook, he has a much better idea of this world than we do. He’s been here a long time. He knows the rules better.”

“Guess there might be a point to finding this douche after all,” Pete mutters and Ben gives him a nasty look.

“Like you didn’t extensively cite him in your last paper,” Ben says back, defensive anger boiling in his chest. Sammy pats Ben’s shoulder with the hand that Ben’s not currently wrapped his own around.

“Ben, why don’t you check the notebook again? See if he’s left anything else for us?” Emily asks, and Ben obliges, pulling the notebook out from where it’s nestled between his long-sleeved shirt and checkered jacket.

“No, there’s – wait, hold on a second,” Ben squints down at the page where black, glistening ink is appearing before his eyes. “It’s happening right now – Sammy, Lily, look before –”

He kneels down and lays the notebook out on the ground, Sammy, Lily, and Pippa crowding around it as their group comes to halt and the others come to stand over them and stare down at Jack’s latest message.

They stare for quite a long time. Maybe they’re frozen with shock. Ben certainly is. He has no idea what to say to _that_.

It’s eventually Emily that reads it out, her voice clear but terrified, _“Follow Shadowmaker_.”

“It’s a trap,” Mary says, quavering. “Whoever said that this was a trap – you’re right. The Shadowmaker’s in charge of this notebook, somehow. Impersonating Jack, making us trust it.”

“No,” Ben says with growing insistence, his instincts telling him that he has to trust this message – Jack’s never led him astray before. “No, that can’t be. All of his messages before –”

“–could be tricking you into trusting this, now,” Emily gestures toward the notebook with a miserable expression on her face. “Ben, why the hell would we _ever_ want to find the Shadowmaker, let alone follow him?”

“That could be our way out! Or our way _to_ Jack!” Ben practically yells, and he gets quite a few shushes. He looks desperately at Sammy, but Sammy won’t stop staring at the ground. “What if the Shadowmaker has him hostage somewhere? What if we need to save him? We have to listen to him!”

“You’re not risking your life for that,” Sammy finally stares up at Ben, his eyes bright and absolutely serious in a way that takes the wind out of Ben’s lungs. “None of you are, but especially you, Ben. We’re not following the Shadowmaker. We’re following Troy, and hoping we find the river.”

“That’s biding time and you all know it,” Ben bites out, but Lily snatches up the notebook before Ben can reach for it again. He gives her a betrayed look.

“My brother wouldn’t lead anyone into harm’s way,” Lily says, hugging the notebook to her chest almost protectively. “Especially not me, and especially not Sammy. Mary’s right – this isn’t real.”

“ _Sammy_?” Pete repeats, turning to Sammy derisively with a chortle. “What’s your deal with the golden prince of paranormal academia, Stevens? Sounds like he’s your _boyfriend._ ”

Ben knows it’s a joke, knows Pete meant it as a joke, but the look on Sammy’s face is so shattered that Ben snaps “Can you please, for the love of God, shut the fuck up for once in your life? You’re the least productive member of society I’ve ever met, Pete.”

“What he said,” Lily glares Pete down as well, and he mutters a half-hearted apology before turning around.

Ben can tell, and knows that Sammy can too if the way he stares at his shoes is any indication, that the others have picked up the implications of what’s been said by now and connected it with everything else. Emily’s staring at Sammy with a heartbroken look on her face and a hand over her heart. Troy’s biting his lip with tears forming rapidly in his eyes.

It’s Mary who takes the step toward Sammy, holding a hand out toward him. Sammy takes it, and Mary pulls him into a long, tight hug.

“If we’re done with the mushiness,” Lily says, though it’s with a much more subdued voice than previously, “let’s get to that river, Ranger. Stevens, keep an eye on Ben. Make sure he doesn’t run off after any masked villains.”

Ben half-glares at Lily, but he’s hardly going to abandon the group even when he knows they’re wrong, and he tries to explain that to Sammy as they keep walking. Sammy has a tight grip of his own now on Ben’s wrist, and doesn’t seem to show any signs of letting go.

“My heart stats never lie,” Ben whispers to Sammy, “and I _know_ that Jack wrote that.”

“I don’t know what heart stats means. Besides, you’ve never met Jack,” Sammy says, staring straight ahead. “Or you’ve met Jack once. Either way, I know him a little better than you. That might be his handwriting, but there’s no way it’s him.”

“If the circumstance demanded it –” Ben says and Sammy shushes him by stepping on his foot.

Ben isn’t sure how long they walk until Troy stops short in front of them with a jolt.

“Well,” Troy tells them, his voice more than a little shocked and disturbed, “I don’t know how much of a river this is, but…”

Ben scrambles ahead of the others to see what Troy’s looking at, dragging Sammy along with him.

Troy’s staring down at what looks like could’ve been a river a few millennia ago, but now looks like a careening gouge in the dirt filled with black sludge. It reminds Ben of pictures of lava in Hawaii; it’s moving, barely enough to be visible to the naked eye, looking altogether sinister in its slow crawl through the landscape.

“I don’t think this is the river on my map,” Troy says softly.

“I don’t think this is a river at all,” Mary echoes. “I mean – can’t you hear it?”

Ben leans closer to try and tell what Mary’s talking about, but almost the second she says it, he begins to hear the whispers. At first it just sounds like wind, but Ben knows there’s no wind here. It’s the whispers of the shadows, the whispers of their master, seducing and controlling their world, drawing each of them closer to the blackened sludge.

_“Ben. Ben, you have to come. Ben, hurry. You know you need to, I know you know you need to. Come on. You know. You know it’s the only way to end this. The only way to find what you’re looking for. Come on. Ben. You know.”_

The voice doesn’t terrify Ben, but it does sink into his stomach and settle like a horrible omen. He can’t ignore this voice. He knows. He knows he has to follow it, regardless of who’s asking him. Whether it’s Jack, the Shadowmaker, or someone else entirely, Ben knows where he has to go.

_“Don’t go alone.”_

“Did anyone else here that?” Sammy asks, turning to make eye contact with Ben as Mary whimpers on the other side of him, holding tightly onto Troy. “ _Don’t go alone_.”

A chorus of no greets Sammy but Ben look up at him with wide eyes and nods. 

Everything becomes incredibly clear in an instant. Ben doesn’t necessarily know why, but he doesn’t need to know, doesn't need certainty. Ben always acts on instinct; he’s all gut and heart, not logic and reason.

He’s not going to regret this. His heart stats don’t lie.

“Emily,” Ben turns to his other side, where Emily is wearing an odd expression of shock mingled with resignation, like she already knows Ben is about to do something monumentally stupid. “Wait for us.”

“What –?” Emily says, and Sammy echoes her, but Ben ignores that.

Instead, he takes a tight hold of Sammy’s forearm and gives Emily one last long look of goodbye, just in case.

“Trust me,” Ben says to Sammy, and after a second’s hesitation, Sammy nods, his jaw set like he’s accepted whatever Ben has planned already, like he knows there’s no stopping him. It’s a good thing Sammy’s finally learning.

Ben takes a shuddering breath as he looks down at the black sludge. It's started to swirl like it’s a vortex going to lead him somewhere, somewhere dark and terrifying and full of shadows. Ben isn’t scared. Ben has to trust his heart.

He locks his arm with Sammy's - and then he jumps. 

He hears shouts behind him followed by a series of curse words out of Lily’s mouth. The last thing he sees when his eyes involuntarily flash back at his friends is Emily’s hand, outstretched toward him, begging him to take it and let her save him.

Holding tight to Sammy, the darkness submerges them both.


	12. Chapter Eleven

Ben is ripped apart at the seams. 

He no longer has any sense of his body other than the sensation of splitting pain starting in his core and exploding outward. He would cry out but there’s a gagging sensation in his throat stopping him from making a noise louder than a pathetic whimper. The pressure in his head is too intense, threatening to crack his skull and break the rest of his bones even after his heart stops.

The darkness so overwhelming, like Ben's jumped into a portal to hell or the Dementors from Harry Potter are sucking his soul out. 

Ben has never been more certain that he’s going to die.

And then there’s light. Brilliant hot white light. It’s just as painful, but without the fear that came along with the darkness, the certainty of impending doom and destruction that the darkness carries with it like an ominous roll of thunder.

A strike of black lightning.

Ben still can’t breathe but that’s less of a problem now. The pressure is gone, not receding but just immediately disappearing; he’s floating in space, in a great expanse of white nothingness. The pain is so consistent and static that his body grows numb to it.

Ben isn’t sure how long he floats, but a slow awareness trickles over him. He still has a body, one that is capable of movement, even if it’s heavy and lethargic and feels like lifting a horrible weight. He twitches his fingers, trying to reach out for Sammy, wherever he may be.

He has the thought that he still has eyes. With great effort, he opens them. He’s no longer floating. He’s no longer surrounding by light. The weight of his body fades away. 

Ben's standing in someone’s living room.

Soft, golden sunlight streams in through a large white-framed window. If Ben peers out, he can see cars passing on a busy city street, ordinary people walking their dogs on the sidewalk. On the window ledge, there are a series of potted plants growing, not large but all clearly well cared for. There’s a plush red couch and a matching armchair facing a flat-screen television, all sitting on top of a red and gold striped rug. Across from Ben is an open doorway.

Ben half-turns to see if there’s anything else in the room, and that’s when he sees Sammy gaping open-mouthed at the place from right next to him, almost entirely still with shock. Their feet are nearly touching they’re standing so close together.

Sammy appears younger than he did in the forest, or maybe just cleaner. When Ben looks closely, he sees that he was right the first time around. His hair is shorter, falling just above his chin instead of down to his shoulders, and it’s curled behind his ears. He looks more well-groomed, better cared for, a fullness to his face instead of a hollowness. He has less scruff. He isn’t as thin. His eyes seem brighter.

“Sammy?” Ben whispers and Sammy jolts in surprise at the sound of Ben’s voice. Sammy looks at him with complete unreserved wonder, lips parting just slightly.

“I’m home,” Sammy whispers, half reverence, half fear. _I was home for the first time in so long. “_ Ben...” 

Sammy glances around the room as if he expects it to disappear, and Ben can’t help but look with him, with fresh eyes that aren’t clouded by sentimentality, searching for a clue. 

Ben looks at his feet, and sucks in a terrified breath. 

Jack’s notebook touches his shoe. It’s covered in black slime - but it’s here, here with them. 

“Sammy -” Ben feels sick, leaning down to pick it up. Had Lily dropped it after then for some reason? Did it have the mind of its own? Did the Shadowmaker - 

Ben doesn’t have time to think it through, because that’s when they hear a crashing noise. Ben’s eyes shoot immediately to the open doorway as he stuffs the notebook back in his checkered jacket. 

Jack Wright stares at them with a shattered coffee mug at his feet.

Jack looks different as well, more like his pictures from years ago than when Ben saw him in his hallucination in the Void. No beard, short cropped hair, free of injuries. His eyes are wide with shock before they surprisingly turn hard and forbidding as Jack forcibly clenches his fist and his head jerks away from them.

Sammy gapes, and Ben recognizes noise he makes in the back of his throat as a plea.

“Thought I blocked you out,” Jack says, more gruffly than Ben would’ve imagined as he hovers in the doorway without walking toward them. If anything, he cowers away as he squeezes his eyes closed. “Jesus fucking Christ, it’s been ages.”

“Jack,” Sammy starts, strangled, and Jack flinches at the sound of his voice. “Jack, what –?”

“You’re not real,” Jack says and the pieces fall into place in Ben’s head. This is a hallucination, only it’s just the room. All three of them are real - but Jack doesn’t know that. “You’re a trick. I need to get out of here, back to the forest – you’re just a design to keep me trapped here. Go away.”

Jack’s voice is very nearly desperate; he has to think Sammy and Ben are a part of the hallucinations of the Void. He’s probably hallucinated Sammy plenty of times before now – he has, Ben remembers. There had been an older entry in his notebook about seeing Sammy begging him to come home. Ben’s stomach turns, the weight of the notebook pressing against his chest. 

“Jack, please listen to me –” Ben starts, and the sound of his voice makes Jack jump backwards in shock. Had he even noticed Ben before now, too preoccupied with Sammy?

“Who are you?” Jack asks, blinking at him with suspicious eyes, but there’s more room in his voice for belief that this is somehow different than all the times he’s dreamed of Sammy before now.

“This is Ben, Ben Arnold,” Sammy says quickly. “Jack, we’re not your hallucination. We’re here, we’re real – we’re in the Void. We got here through Alaska? The thing moved from Colorado to Alaska. We jumped into this – this portal thing, in the river?”

“Fuck,” Jack’s wide eyes look from one of them to the other with equal trepidation, his voice growing more desperate and pleading. “Wait, no. That can’t – can’t possibly be real, this isn’t real. You’d never come here, I don’t know what new tactic this is, but – you can’t be here. None of this is real.”

“This place isn’t,” Ben gestures around the room, and he can see from the corner of his eye that that assertion of the truth makes Sammy flinch in pain. How long has it been since Sammy was home? At least three years. “But the two of us? We are. Jack, I can prove it to you.”

“How?” Jack asks. Heart in his chest as Ben remembers how Jack snapped Ben out of his hallucination; Ben turns to Sammy and takes a hold of his elbow to lift his arm. 

Sammy looks at Ben confusedly for a moment before his face clears to one of realization, and he lets Ben guide his arm forward. With a stumble in his step, he walks toward Jack, his arm outstretched and waiting.

Jack’s eyes are so soft and gentle on Sammy, and he reaches back seemingly without thinking about it.

Ben grabs onto the back of Sammy’s shirt in case they’re somehow separated by whatever comes next. He knows that the Void would find a way to do that to them.  

“Better not be a trick,” Jack says, breathless but hopeful.

Sammy and Jack’s hands meet in the middle - all it takes is the lightest touch of their fingertips for the lights around them to begin to flicker, the hallucinated sunlight from the apartner window receding into spurpling darkness.

The apartment is stripped away like bad, rusty veneer, becoming a bad imitation before becoming nothing at all. The couch, the red carpeting, the window and the plants, all fall into scattered and crumpled pieces around the three of them, revealing a dark, desolate forest.

A ripple seems to go through Jack and he shudders. When Ben looks at his face again, it’s the same face he saw in his own kitchen, however long ago that was. Nicks and cuts appear on his face along with a nasty-looking scrape on his forehead. His shirt becomes ripped and frayed, his hair and beard get longer and more tangled.

In his bruised and scraped right hand, gripped tightly in his dirty fingernails, is the same notebook that had somehow jumped with Ben into the lake. 

He touches the cover through his jacket.  It’s still there, the same as the one in Jack's hands. Identical. 

“Jack,” Sammy breathes, and Jack’s mouth falls open like he’s never seen anything more incredible than Sammy standing in the desolation of the Void, like a light in the darkness. Ben loses his grip on Sammy’s shirt as Sammy crosses the space between himself and Jack.

They both try to reach for each other, but it’s no use. Their hands pass through one another, not able to cling together. 

It’s like Jack’s an apparition, or Sammy’s one.

Someone isn’t fully solid.

Maybe they both aren't. 

It becomes increasingly apparent that they can’t touch at all. Jack’s arms keep falling through Sammy and colliding with one another.

Ben feels his own tears threaten to fall as Sammy cries out in frustration, trying to touch Jack’s face as his fingers catch nothing but air, again and again. 

“This isn’t the first time this has happened, that I can’t touch someone. Sometimes I can see people here, hear their conversations, but they can’t see me at all,” Jack bites his lip regretfully, his own hands wavering close to but not touching Sammy’s waist. “I – I don’t think we’re in the same place. Not really.”

“We’re in the same place,” Ben says slowly, stepping forward and Jack turns to give him an appraising look, eyebrows creased together as he considers what Ben’s saying. “It’s just different _times_.”

“Time is really fucked here,” Jack nods at Ben, pursing his lips together almost painfully. “The hallucinations make that worse. I never know how long I’m trapped in one of those awful dreams.”

“It can’t have been for long,” Ben says, and Sammy and Jack both give him a confused look. Carefully, so as not to spook Jack, Ben reaches into his jacket and pulls out Jack’s notebook.

Jack’s eyebrows shoot upwards as he clings tightly to his own, holding it upward as if to ask Ben what the hell is happening. 

“I’ve been getting messages from you, in this thing. You haven’t sent them, have you? At least – not _yet_.”

“No, no,” Jack shakes his head, holding up his own copy of the notebook. Sammy’s eyes flicker between them, wide and terrified. “My – my pen’s nearly out of ink. I’m saving up the last bit for emergencies.”

“Okay,” Ben says quietly, trying to sort through all of this information in his head. “Okay, you haven’t sent me any message which means you probably haven’t saved me yet either. You seemed to know who I was then, so it makes sense that this happened first for you. That makes about as much sense as anything makes here. You needed to see us right now to know we were here so that you could save us later. Is the timeline just backwards for us, then? But how –”

Jack breaks off Ben’s out-loud theorizing with a startled jump as he stares at Ben like he just properly saw him for the first time after the shock and emotion that came with seeing Sammy.

“Dude,” Jack says, eyes going wide. “Your jacket.”

“What?” Sammy asks, eyes going to Ben’s jacket as well. Ben touches the pocket of it a little self-consciously, not sure what this could be about or why Jack is choosing to focus on this right now when the world is falling apart around them.

“Did you – holy shit,” Jack’s eyes start to water. “Where did you find that? Did you take it off – off a _body_? Jesus, I hoped he was going to be safe, I hoped someone found him and brought him out of this place –”

“ _Jack_ ,” Ben interrupts holding a hand up, not sure what’s happening but his body seems to know it’s important; he’s practically thrumming with energy and fear. “I didn’t find the jacket anywhere. I’ve had it basically my whole life. I had it – _oh_.”

“No, that’s _my_ jacket,” Jack says with growing fear, and God, Ben wishes he could touch Jack too, that he could run over and hug him, because his body knows what this means even if his brain is still a little slow on the uptake.

“There was this little boy,” Jack shudders. “God, he was so cold, crying his eyes out, curled up against this tree – I don’t think he could see me, but I don’t know. I kept trying to pick him up, get him warm and take him with me but I couldn’t touch him. My hands went right through him. I left my jacket – _that_ jacket – on top of him, hoping that it would stay, that it would keep him warm enough until someone could help him. Are you sure you didn’t –”

“Ben,” Sammy sounds on the brink of tears even more so than before. “When you were twelve. You were found in that jacket. Weren’t you?”

“Oh, God,” Ben knows he’s crying in earnest now even though he can’t feel the tears on his face. “You – Jack. That kid was me. Jack, I’m from King Falls – in Washington, where the Void was for years and years – I got lost in the Void when I was a kid, and I knew – I knew someone saved me. _You_ saved me.”

“Are – are you –” Jack stares, the words clearly struggling to come out of his mouth. “Are you saying you’ve been in this place since you were a kid? Since it was in King Falls?”

“No, no,” Ben says quickly, reaching a hand toward Sammy so he can touch something, and Sammy steps toward him so Ben can get a hold of his shirt again. “I was found, you – you saved me, I was only missing for a few weeks. This jacket stopped me from freezing to death. I remember someone – _you_ - holding me –”

“No, I couldn’t touch him,” Jack shakes his head, but his eyes go over Ben like he recognizes him. “Touch _you_. I tried, I tried so hard to help you but – but it was just – just the jacket.”

“I felt it, whatever you did,” Ben tells him, holding back a sob. “I felt you there."

“Why the hell did you come back?” Jack asks, and then his eyes widen with disbelief as he looks from Ben to Sammy. “You came – together? You seem to know – know about me, about – about us, and no one ever –”

“We came here on the same expedition,” Sammy fills in the blanks for Jack. “The same team of researchers. Ben’s one of those parapsychology students who writes about you.” 

Ben can feel himself blushing as Jack looks at him, his expression mostly confusion. 

“Team,” Jack repeats, eyes going back to Sammy, his expression torn between terror and affection. “You came here with a team?”

“They’re like a – a science expedition thingy,” Sammy explains, stumbling over his words. “I came to find you. You’ve been missing for three years.”

Jack’s breath becomes a horrified shudder, and his hands clench together as if he’s trying to keep himself from shaking. “God. I can’t – I can’t keep track here. I thought….I knew I’d be declared missing, but I thought I’d been gone for a few months at most. I’m so sorry, Sammy. I’m so goddamn sorry, I –”

Jack tries to reach out again to cup Sammy’s face but his hands pass through Sammy like they're both transparent.

Sammy flinches when Jack’s hand can’t touch him, his expression shattered. 

“I don’t think it’s been that long for you,” Ben doesn’t know if this will reassure Jack or make it worse, but he has to try to explain how he’s fitting this into the version of events that’s gone down. “I think we’re running in opposite directions, maybe? I mean, you saved my life when I was twelve. That’s fifteen years in the past. But you also saved me on this trip, in the present, and that clearly hasn’t happened yet.”

“You said –” Jack says shakily, gesturing over at Ben’s notebook. “You said I left you messages?”

“Warnings about what was coming, directions for where to go,” Ben nods fervently, opening the notebook to show Jack the final pages. Jack can move to peer over his shoulder even if Jack can’t touch him. “Personal messages for Sammy and Lily – proof that it was you.”

“Lily’s here?” Jack turns to Sammy with wide, hopeful eyes and Sammy nods, biting his quivering lip.

“She is,” Sammy tells him, real affection entering his voice. “You kept us all safe, Jack.”

“So….I need to do that,” Jack says, a determination in his voice that Ben recognizes from Lily’s. A sibling resemblance. “I need to know what’s coming for you – and leave you messages to help you. None of that has happened yet. I don’t know how long that will take me to figure it all out but maybe if the timelines cross in the right way I’ll be able to tell what you’re doing. I don’t understand how the time works yet, but I’ve already been stuck here for years, so what’s a few more to crack the code?”

His laugh is tight and humorless and obviously made to try and alleviate the pain already present on Sammy’s face as he tries and fails to reach for Jack again.

“No, you have to come with us, with _me_ ,” Sammy chokes through his words, his hands shaking as they try to touch Jack’s face, his neck, his shoulders, anything, but Jack still isn’t solid. “I’m not leaving you again.”

“You never left me,” Jack says to Sammy, a sudden fierceness in his voice matched only by his regret. “If anything, I left you. You’re only here because of me – and now I have to make it up to you. Keep you safe enough while you’re here for you to get out.”

“No, I’m not – I won’t leave you here, in this awful place –”

“That’s not how this works,” Jack turns to Ben to ask for confirmation, and Ben steps forward to get a hand on Sammy’s shoulder, so at least he has some human physical comfort even If it isn’t Jack’s. “Is it?”

“Sammy, we don’t make it this far without Jack’s help, and he hasn’t helped us yet,” Ben says quietly, trying to explain even though his voice keeps shaking and cracking on every other word. He doesn’t want to leave Jack, either.

“I don’t care,” Sammy says, repeating himself again with a higher, more panicked voice. His entire body shakes, and Jack’s hands move closer as if to call him but waver next to his elbows without touching him. “I don’t care about any of that, I can’t – I can’t –”

“I’ll figure it out,” Jack promises, staring Sammy square in the eye with all the belief and hope that Ben always knew Jack Wright would have. “I’ll figure out how to save you, and then I’ll come home. I promise. Ben – how do I get this notebook to you?”

"How do you even have it now?" Sammy asks, eyes narrowing just slightly. "Didn't Lily -"

”I think it followed me,” Ben suppresses a shudder as both Jack and Sammy give him twin terrified looks. “Not that it had a will of its own, but - I think the Shadowmaker somehow forced Lily to drop it. I don’t think he can touch the notebook - but he can touch the rest of us.” 

Ben can't think about that any longer, so he turns to Jack with a resolute look, focusing on what matters most. 

“As for getting it to me...” Ben winces, trying to think of how to complete this puzzle piece but still without any clues. “I have no fucking idea. I got it in the mail. Just – figure that out when it comes to it. Find a way to get it out of the Void, at the very least, pass it on to someone if you can. Hopefully…it’s all meant to work out from there. Somehow.”

“Somehow,” Jack agrees, smiling at Ben with encouragement, so sure that Ben could never doubt him.

Sammy laughs, humorless and desperate. “How can you have so much faith in something so vague?”

“I know there’s a long list of things you don’t believe in,” Jack turns to Sammy with a sad look in his eye, but it’s filled with affection, too. “But believe in me, alright? Believe in Ben. I can already tell you do. Ben, you’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid before I get back to him?”

“I will,” Ben promises, and Jack looks him in the eye with a grin, real and genuine, like there’s not a chance they’ll never see each other again.

“I’ll be home as soon as I can, I promise,” Jack says to Sammy, almost a whisper, but Sammy’s next words are almost a shout, desperation taking over.

“You can’t promise that, Jack – time is so fucked up here – I mean, you saw Ben _fifteen_ years ago. What if you come back in that time? Or years and years before that, so you’re dead and gone before I’m even born? Or years after – and I’m an old man, or already gone. Jack –”

“I won’t, I _won’t_ ,” Jack stops Sammy’s panic by putting his hands on Sammy’s shoulders, and even though Ben knows that they’re threatening to swipe through, Jack keeps them balanced like they can really touch. “I’ll love you no matter what, find you no matter what. I’ll find the right time to come home, I’ll convince the Shadowmaker to let me out at the right time.”

There’s a rumbling sound in the distance, like the awful thunder that accompanies lightning. It makes all three of them flinch.

“Shit, I said his name,” Jack clenches his jaw. “We have to get out of here now before he finds us. We’ve got – well, we’ve both got my notebook. I’ll find some way to get it to you, Ben – and then I’ll get home. Somehow.”

His voice wavers, and Ben quickly adds “Your theory about the roving Void – you mentioned something about thinking maybe it’s at its weakest when it moves from place to place. Maybe – test that theory. I mean, no one knows more about this place than you. If anyone has a shot at being smart enough to make it out –”

“A lot of good that’s done me, with the Shadowmaker always trying to hunt me down,” Jack grimaces for a moment, but his eyes are genuine and soft on Ben’s. “I’ll try my best.”

“Wait,” Sammy interrupts, a hurt half-glare on his face, but his voice sounds more sure and solid, so much so that it worries Ben. “Jack can’t come with us – but I can stay with him.”

“ _No_ ,” Jack and Ben both say at the same time, both with the same amount of fear and panic in their voices, and Sammy flinches back at the impact.

Ben feels a spike of terror, but thankfully Jack beats him to the punch. 

“There’s nothing tying you here,” Jack pleads, and his hand tries to wrap around Sammy’s but just glides through. “You need to stay with Ben, get back to the rest of your team. None of this is worth anything if I can’t get you out of here.”

“But –” Sammy starts, and Jack shushes him.

“We can’t even touch,” Jack says, his hand passing through Sammy’s cheek to make his point. Sammy shudders, swaying toward Jack involuntarily. “It’s not meant to be. You need to stay with Ben. I won’t let you stay in this place any longer than you have to.”

“I’ll keep him safe,” Ben promises Jack with wide eyes. “I’ll keep him safe until you get home.”

Ben’s eyes travel to Sammy and he knows that Jack’s do, too. Sammy gives them both blank, betrayed stares.

“I just want to stay with you,” Sammy turns to Jack, one last attempt. Jack looks past Sammy to Ben, asking him _please._ Ben reaches forward to pull Sammy back, and Sammy stumbles backwards into him lethargically like he’s lost all hope.

“Wait just a second,” Jack says, eyes narrowing like a thought just occurred to him. “Ben – Ben has my jacket. Hell, Ben’s had my jacket for fifteen years. So I bet you can have –”

Ben practically holds his breath once he sees Jack reach for the small gold band on his left ring finger, and he can hear Sammy suck in a terrified and heartbroken breath as well that threatens to turn into a sob.

Screwing up his face with trepidation, Jack drops the ring on the forest floor, and without a second’s pause, Sammy leans down and picks it up.

It’s solid in Sammy’s hand. Sammy clenches it in his fist and stares at the ground where it Jack dropped it, Ben knows because the tears have overwhelmed him and he doesn’t want Ben to see.

“Be home soon, okay?” Jack’s voice wavers, and Sammy looks up to meet his eye. He nods: a promise.

It’s like a spell has been broken. Another ripple filters through the forest.

When Ben looks up again, Jack is gone. There’s just darkness where he stood, like he was never there in the first place.

Sammy chokes back a sob and Ben surges forward to hug him. He can feel one of Sammy’s hands grasp his jacket, Jack’s jacket, and the other stays clenched against Ben’s shoulder, clenching Jack’s ring.

“Sammy,” Ben whispers words of comfort into his shoulder over and over. He knows it’s no replacement for staying with Jack, though. “It’s okay – he’ll make it home – he’s so smart, you know he’ll make it home – everything’s going to be fine – you have his ring, you know it was real –”

That just makes Sammy cry harder, but Ben eventually disentangles them with a nod at Sammy’s hand. With red eyes, Sammy opens his palm. The gold band is still there, still solid and real. Sammy bites his lip, and moves to slip it into his left ring finger.

Ben knows that was the wrong move a moment later – it’s like Sammy flipped a switch. The Shadowmaker likes that, likes making you flip switches without realizing that’s what you’re doing to play into his hand.

The forest is no longer a forest. Everything goes pitch black. Thunder rumbles.

“ _Sammy_?” Ben tries to scream but he has no voice. The ground falls out from beneath him, and he desperately claws in front of him, but his hands only hit air. That’s if he still has hands at all.

Ben freefalls into nothingness, his body spiraling downward with no way of stopping himself from hitting the ground. Ben can already imagine the sickening crunch.

A laugh rings in his ears, scratching, low and vicious.

The Shadowmaker. Ben is alone with the Shadowmaker.


	13. Chapter Twelve

_Give it to me._

The words repeat in Ben’s head, bowling him over like each one is a punch to his gut. Even though Ben barely feels like he has a body or even that he has any physical form at all anymore, the pain overwhelms him, twisting through him and leaving him gasping for a breath he can’t take.

_You know what I want. Give it to me._

_You can’t have it,_ Ben tells the Shadowmaker. He has no voice. If he had one, no words would come out, only screams.  He knows the Shadowmaker can hear him anyway. He can feel something slithering in the back of his mind and he knows it’s _him,_ creeping through his thoughts, twisting them around and making them burn.

_Ben Arnold. You will give me what I want._

_Take it then,_ Ben thinks desperately. _Take it from me if you want it so badly._

The Shadowmaker is silent, but the pain that scissors through Ben like he’s being sliced into pieces is answer enough.

 _You can’t_ , Ben realizes once he has the right state of mind to think properly again, the pain receding just enough to be hovering on the edges of his consciousness. _You can’t take it from me, or you would have by now. Somehow you made the notebook fall into the sludge with me when I jumped even though I wasn't holding it. You can move it - move us - around at your will. Spin us upside down, drop us into darkness - but you can't take it for yourself, can you? You just have shadow puppets._

 _Mine,_ is all the creature hisses in response, but Ben knows he’s struck a nerve.

 _Why do you even want it_? Ben asks. At least now, he can find an answer. There’s no way out of this that he can think of. In this pitch black shadow world, he has almost no sense of himself let alone anything else; escape seems impossible. If nothing else, at least here he can figure out why. _So I can’t expose the truth? So Jack can’t?_

A sickening pain shoots through his spine like he’s been pricked with a needle full of poisonous venom and it’s coursing through his veins.

 _That’s why you’ve hunted him down,_ Ben thinks of Jack’s words about the Shadowmaker coming after him specifically. _You know Jack knows more about you than anyone else. You know he’ll expose the truth about you. And you can’t have that, can you? You can’t bear that anyone’s figured you out._

Ben tries to scream as his skull tightens with pressure, threatening to crack, but he isn’t even sure he has a mouth to scream with.

 _You can control everything in here_ , Ben fights through the pain to form a crystalline thought in his mind, _but nothing that happens out there. And that scares the fuck out of you, doesn’t it_?

The Shadowmaker is the one who screams this time, a high-pitched screech that makes Ben’s brain feels like it’s on fire as the Shadowmaker sets it alight from the inside out.

 _You have to be a mystery,_ Ben keeps going, he has to keep going or he’ll just wither and die. _You have to be a mystery, or you’ll never suck anyone else up again. You always have everyone that’s ever been in here – but you need more. You’re desperate for more, and you'll never get it._

Ben waits for the pain to return with a vengeance, but there isn’t any. There’s only a voice, low and dangerous.

_You will give me that notebook or your friends will die here. There is no escape without my help._

_I escaped before,_ Ben reminds him. _Tim escaped._

 _You slipped away – I barely noticed when you entered,_ the Shadowmaker is nearly derisive rather than terrifying. _And you’re still here, a scared little boy, freezing against that tree. You’ll always be freezing against that tree._

Ben can’t focus on the horrible ache that the idea causes, that this creature will always have its teeth in him and has all his life.

 _We’re stronger than you,_ Ben tells the Shadowmaker. _There’s so many of us. We won’t just slip through your fingers – we’ll beat you._

 _You can’t,_ the Shadowmaker sounds certain, but Ben isn’t. Ben knows that there’s a weakness somewhere. He remembers touching Debbie’s hand. Certainly the Shadowmaker never planned for that. Not to mention that Tim had made it home to Mary, and of course, someday, Jack would make it home to Sammy.

 _Love?_ The Shadowmaker’s laugh is as terrifying as anything else about him. _Love can’t save you. So many of my wanderers will be here for eternity, never see their loved ones again because of me. Give me that notebook and you can depart, as much as anyone ever departs from me. Deny me and I’ll make sure you wander through my world for all eternity and never see your friends again._

 _You’re wrong,_ Ben tells the Shadowmaker, struggling to keep coherent thoughts in his head as the Shadowmaker plays in the corners of his mind, cackling madly and setting Ben’s thoughts ablaze, not with fire but with black lightning.

 _Love can save anyone,_ Ben thinks, and if it’s his last thought, at least it’s a good one. A hopeful note to go out on. _Bring anyone home._

_Not if I consume you first._

The Shadowmaker hisses out a horrific chuckle, almost like he’s human. The thought chills Ben to his core – he had assumed that this was some sort of demon monster, but what if this was just a human being with more power than should ever be possible?

_I don’t kill my victims. I let them fester. I let them wander, so I can keep them forever. But you, Ben Arnold – I will make an exception for you. I will eat you alive._

The frayed edges of Ben’s brain where the Shadowmaker lurked are suddenly ripped away and the center of his mind is the victim now. He tries to scream out in horrific pain as the darkness threatens to swallow him whole, take away his brain as well as his body, consuming his soul.

If Ben dies here, what happens next?

He can’t fight back. It’s useless. He barely has enough thoughts left of his own, and they’re all blurring together. Fear and pain and madness and destruction and a bone-aching sadness that Ben’s mom will never know what happened to him.

 _Love,_ Ben thinks to himself, and the thought sticks. The Shadowmaker can’t touch that word, or anything that lies behind it. His mom. Sammy. Emily. His friends. Even Pete Meyers, obnoxious as he may be, is behind that word.

Ben feels thoughts that aren’t his, he feels _kill, eat, destroy,_ and they make him choke, but _love_ remains his own.

He can’t save himself – but maybe someone else can.

Ben’s mind travels to the past, his hand grabbing onto Sammy’s arm and hurtling them both into the darkness of the murky river. He focuses on what it felt like to jump, the fear and trepidation but also the certainty of knowing he was making the right choice.

He remembers Emily reaching out for him, her mouth parted in shock, her dark hair falling around her face and framing her pretty features. Her eyes so wide and bright and terrified for him.

Her arm outstretched, begging him to take her hand. 

Ben hadn’t taken it then.

Now, though – now he can take it.

Ben can’t feel his body, doesn’t know if and how he’s doing it, but he trusts the final receptors in his brain to reach out toward Emily Potter, toward his friends, asking for their help.

A hand clenches around Ben’s, small and delicate but calloused and strong all at once, and Ben clasps his fingers around hers.

“ _He’s here! He’s in the lake! Ben!”_

What feels like dozens of hands and arms encircle Ben; the fire in his brain, the screaming ferocity of the Shadowmaker’s final attempts to eat him away to nothing, ebbs into a tiny flicker until the monster dissolves into nothingness.

It’s only then that Ben realizes he’s struggling to breathe, his body real and present, his mind and body equally feeling every ache and pain and bruise.

Not to mention that from the awful wetness that he feels, he can tell he’s covered from head to toe in black sludge.

Ben hacks violently until the very same sludge gushes from his mouth, and the complete revolting nature of that happening makes Ben groan in misery and disgust.

“Oh God, he’s alright, he’s breathing!”

Ben feels someone hug him to their chest, and he finds himself hugging back, his arms still mostly numb. The pressure of another human heart beating against his makes it easier to breathe, so he focuses on that. He curls into someone’s chest and can feel their heartbeat against his ear.  

“Benny, you’re alright,” the voice sobs, and Ben realizes that it’s Emily. He almost smiles, curling into her warm embrace. 

“Em,” Ben tries to say, but his voice scratches like he hasn’t used it in years, and he coughs again. Thankfully, it’s just a violent hack without vomiting anything up.

“You’re safe, you’re safe now,” Emily whispers over and over, and Ben hears a disbelieving and wonderful marvel in her voice. “Does anyone have water?”

A moment later, Ben feels a hand on the back of his head – large, calloused, it must be Troy – and someone’s gently pushing water down his throat.

Ben coughs and splutters, but he drinks all the same, and the cool liquid on his throat makes it burn less. When he blinks open his eyes with some difficulty, he finds Emily’s face right in front of his, tear-stained but smiling like he’s the best thing she’s ever seen.

“You’re alright,” Emily whispers, and she kisses his cheek. When she moves back, Ben sees the black stain on her lips from the sludge on his cheek, but she doesn’t even wipe it away. Ben stares at her, not quite comprehending.

“You alright, buddy?” Troy says from his other side, and that’s when Ben notices that a crowd of faces surround him. Mary, crouching next to Troy, tears in her eyes. Pippa James, her hand on one of his ankles, patting him softly. Lily sitting next to her, not touching Ben but the look on her face is pure relief.

Even Pete, standing above them all, looks glad to see Ben. There’s only one face missing.

“Sammy,” Ben says, panic bubbling in his chest. Surely the Shadowmaker didn’t… “Where’s Sammy, is he –”

“Present,” a rough and scratching voice echoes from behind him, but it’s so clearly Sammy’s that Ben almost falls over in relief. With a groan and a pain in his side, he manages to turn to see Sammy laying, somewhat crumpled, on the forest floor behind him, his eyes half-closed but still half-smiling at Ben. “I fainted. S’no big deal. Are _you_ okay, buddy?”

“What – what happened?” Mary asks, her hand going to Ben’s hair and wiping the black sludge off of his forehead as she does so. “You and Sammy jumped – and then, two seconds later, Lily’s about to jump in after you until Troy catches her - and then Sammy’s falling over behind us and Emily shouted that she could see you in the river.”

Ben doesn’t even know how to tell her, or how to tell all of the wide eyes looking at him for answers, even half of what just happened.

He catches a look at Lily’s shattered expression - maybe the Shadowmaker didn’t force her hand at all.

She had tried to follow them. 

“Jack’s notebook -” Lily’s voice cracks. 

"I have the notebook, Lily,” Ben touches his chest to make sure it's still there, and he see the relief in Lily's eyes as they squeeze shut. 

Ben ignores the rest of the less pressing issues, and instead crawls over to Sammy. 

Sammy pushes himself up with his elbows, opening his eyes fully. He has a dazed look about him, but he seems otherwise whole.

“Thought I saw something snatch you up,” Sammy tells him, blinking rapidly like he’s trying to stop tears. He probably is. Ben isn’t even trying to stop his. “Thought you were gone.”

 _Like Jack_ , Ben can feel the unspoken words between them, and he launches himself forward to hug him. Sammy’s arms don’t come up to hug him back, but his head in the crook of Ben’s shoulder is more than enough.

“Wouldn’t ever leave you,” Ben says, quiet enough for just Sammy to hear, and he can feel Sammy nod.

“ _Did_ something take you?” Emily’s voice is so quiet and scared that Ben lets go of Sammy and turns to face her, biting his lip. “The – the Shadowmaker?”

Ben focuses just on Emily as he nods, not letting himself look anywhere else, especially at the faces of the rest of his friends. He knows Emily will stay strong for him and she does, her gaze unflinching yet so sympathetic.

She kneels down next to him and Sammy both, and reaches an arm out. Ben moves toward it, and Emily gives him a long, steady hug herself. Ben quakes in her arms, but he doesn’t let himself stay there for long.

“A lot happened,” Ben explains, his voice shaky as he breaks away from her to look over at the rest of his friends and their clear concerns and fears. “And I’ll explain it soon. But first – we need to get out of here.”

“How?” Troy asks, his voice more than a little helpless. “I don’t know if you noticed, Ben, but however much time passed for you, none passed for us. We got no new leads, and besides – we haven’t found Jack yet.”

“We found Jack,” Sammy speaks, even though it takes a second’s hesitation and a whole lot of bone-deep sadness. Lily’s head jerks almost violently in his direction.

“ _What_?” Lily hisses, her face turning red, looking wildly from Sammy to the rest of the group, her gentleness from earlier evaporating. “You – you found him and you lost him again?"

“Lily!” Ben interrupts pleadingly and Lily turns to face him with her face equally as venomous, but Ben shuts her down. “We couldn’t!”

“Time is fucked,” Sammy says, his voice breaking. “He was much further back than we were. We couldn’t – couldn’t _touch –”_

Sammy’s voice breaks off miserably, and Ben turns to him to comfort him.

Shockingly, Lily beats him to the punch. With a long sigh and regretful twist of her face, she crosses the gap between herself and Sammy to put a hand on his shoulder. Almost like comfort. Sammy looks up at her, hesitation in his eyes, but eventually puts his hand over hers.

“I’m sorry,” Lily says, voice quiet and almost reticent, and clearly meant for Sammy alone if her glare at the rest of their team is anything to go by. Her hand gets tighter on Sammy’s shoulder. “That you couldn’t save him, but also for – you know – blaming you for it. You don’t deserve it. Especially if he’s really gone, if we just lost him all over again –”

“You didn’t,” Ben clarifies quickly as her voice breaks. “He could still make it out. He _will_ make it out, but it can’t be now. Right now, we need to work on getting out on our own now. And….and I know how.”

He gets seven identical disbelieving looks accompanied by a scoff from Pete. Ben clears his throat as he looks at the forest floor instead of meet their eyes.

“How?” Mary whispers, and Ben bites his lip, wishing he didn’t have to explain something he’d rather no one ever knew.

“We were one – we were the same,” Ben says, an awful nausea passing through him at the thought. “Just for a split second, we were the same. The Shadowmaker and I. We – his mind was my mind.”

“What the _fuck_ …”

Emily cuts Sammy off with a panicked “But how do you –”

“I saw the trail back,” Ben tells her, and she frowns at him. “It’s not a trap. It’s not a trick. He didn’t mean to show me anything – he meant to kill me, and I escaped from him. I saw the trail.”

“There’s a real trail?” Troy asks, disbelief and wonder in his voice. “The path we were following before or –?”

“It’s not – not a _physical_ trail,” Ben knows no one is going to believe him if he explains this, so he has to prove it to them. “It’s a trail through time.”

“Because that makes sense,” Lily stares at Ben with nothing but suspicion. Sammy’s the one to shush her.

“I trust you, Ben,” Sammy says, his voice tired but crystal clear. “And everyone else should, too. Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it.”

“Well, it’s not like there are any better ideas,” Pete says, as cavalier as ever, but Ben’s grateful for it just this one time. “C’mon everyone, listen to Arnold.”

“Okay,” Ben says, scrambling to his feet when there are no more arguments, just resigned faces of acceptance. “Everyone needs to link hands. We all need to touch. Get – get in a circle, so it’s unbroken, so we’re all connected.”

“Touch hands – like how you saved Debbie,” Emily says as she takes Ben’s hand in her own immediately. It’s warm and soft, and more comforting right now than Ben would ever tell her.  He reaches his other hand toward Sammy, who takes it to help himself up off the forest floor.

“Not exactly,” Ben says, “but the touch is still important. Okay, everyone – close your eyes and think about the first day we came here. That first day of hiking. Lily and Pippa, just – just hold tight as you can to everyone else and think about what the forest looks like when it’s not the Void. Don’t speak, just – just think about it, what you were doing and feeling, as hard and as specific as you possibly can.”

Ben squeezes his own eyes shut, the memories seeming so far off that they’re unreachable. How long has it even been since they entered this place? It really doesn’t matter. Time here is constant and overwhelming, and Ben will always be here no matter what happens in the next few minutes.

Ben has to shove that thought to a far corner of his mind and seal it with a cement wall for now, maybe forever, but especially if he’s going to succeed in saving his friends.

The trailhead had a sign – _Beauregard Trail._ Troy had been narrating the woods around them like he was the host of a nature documentary, Mary keeping pace with him in the front and asking questions. Pete had been obnoxious as usual and Emily shut him down, which in retrospect was probably the moment that really locked in Ben’s crush on her.

Pete – right – he’d been making fun of Sammy and Ben for sucking at hiking, which was unwarranted but entirely fair, and Ben asked Sammy about Denver. He’d written an article about sexual assault that Emily liked. Sammy had been embarrassed at the compliment, and Pete had asked Sammy if this was going to be a podcast mockingly.

Sammy didn’t like podcasts. Someone brought up Wright On – Ben, Ben brought up Wright On, without even realizing the connection – it was like Lily and Pippa had been there from the beginning of the trip, always with them.

He feels a shock of electricity in his hands, but doesn’t look up. He thinks that the electricity connected them all, now that Ben’s thought of them each individually, connected them to that day, that time, that place.

Ben out of breath, keeping pace with Sammy, the two of them laughing about something or other, trying to keep the mood light and their minds distracted from what might be ahead. Emily turning around to say –

“ _Is anyone tired? Do we need to take a break to eat? I know my granola bars are burning a hole in my bag.”_

“Did anyone hear –” Emily’s real voice shakes from next to Ben and Ben shushes her with a tight squeeze of her hand.

_“I’d kill for a granola bar. Troy, is it okay? Will we still stay on the right time to get to the campsite?”_

_“Oh, for sure, we can take a quick break no harm done. Sammy and Ben both look about ready to collapse –”_

_“Hey!”_

_“I’m not offended. I_ am _ready to collapse.”_

The voices fade into the distance, jovial and innocent. They don’t know what’s coming. 

Ben feels the light against his eyes, bright and shining, the complete opposite of the darkened, muted forest he’d grown so accustomed to seeing.

“Guys,” Ben whispers, heart in his throat as he hopes beyond hope. “Open your eyes.”

He opens his own, and the brightness hurts. The sunbeams surrounding them overwhelm him so much he almost staggers backwards, and might’ve fallen if not Emily and Sammy’s hands gripping his, keeping him upright. 

The forest around them isn't black. It's green, white, yellow, brown. The sun shines down through the trees, slotting between the branches to meet the forest floor. 

“Holy….” Troy breathes, his arms almost trembling as he tightens his hold on Mary and Pippa’s hands. “It’s – it’s so bright. It’s – _familiar.”_

“What we just heard,” Pete says, looking wildly around their little circle, as if trying to find out if everyone had just been talking, “those voices – I remember that conversation! I remember it! How can that be –”

“You all were faking that, you all must have been talking, that’s not –” Lily’s expression is furious and Ben’s about to snap something at her but then her hard exterior breaks, her lip shaking as she tries to put the pieces together in her head and ultimately fails. She crumples in on herself, looking so young and lost.

“Where are we?” Emily asks, craning her neck to the path. “I mean – the _we_ we just heard. Where did we go?”

“Into the forest,” Ben swallows, bile in the back of his throat. “Into the Void. We all – we went inside of it. Even though we’re outside of it. We’ll always all be in there, in a way, even though we’re out – time all happening at once – he’ll always have us in there –”

Ben’s struck with a painful wave of lightheadedness as he stumbles forward, unable to help himself from falling but luckily Emily holds him upright and to her side until the dizzy spell passes. He regains control of his breath, leaning against her shoulder. She’s warm and comfortable against him as she rests her head on top of his. 

“Can we – can we let go?” Troy says, voice leaking with uncertainty as he holds up still-joined hands, and Ben nods at him.

Everyone separates their hands with nervous looks like it will flip a switch on the darkness again and they’ll be back in that place, but nothing happens. Sammy and Emily don’t let go of Ben, though; they keep holding tightly to him, the concerned looks on their faces saying that they’re afraid he’ll fall again.

“I’m fine,” Ben tells them, even though he’s sure he’s never felt worse except for once, once when he was twelve years old and all alone. At least here, he has friends who will take care of him. “Really, I am. Let’s get out of this forest.”

“I think I know where we are,” Troy says, voice so light for the first time in ages, full of marvel and wonder. He even laughs, wide and open-mouthed, almost delighted. “It shouldn’t be more than an hour’s walk back to where we started our hike….God, yesterday? Last week?”

“Last century,” Pete fills in the blank, his shoulders shuddering. When even Pete is viscerally affected, Ben knows that the time loop isn’t just making him sick to his stomach.  

“We’re back to Alaskan temperatures, and I think most of us lost our winter coats along the way,” Emily thankfully interrupts Ben’s train of thought that’s going nowhere pleasant, “so let’s hurry.”

“It’s a pretty warm day, but good point,” Troy says, casting Ben a concerned look when Ben involuntarily begins to shiver as soon as Emily mentions it. “C’mon, team. I’ve got an emergency radio. I’ll call for help as soon as I’ve got a signal.”

Sammy and Emily both stay on either side of Ben, supporting his weight as they walk.

Ben couldn’t be more grateful. There’s a fragility to him right now that he’s never felt before, like there’s still something horrible staining his insides that he can never get out, a hole in his head that he’ll be stuck with for the rest of his life.

Lily falls into step with the three of them after a few minutes of stumbling forward, with a determined look at Sammy that reminds Ben so violently of Jack that he almost starts crying again. Emily seems to be able to tell, patting Ben’s hair as they walk.

“So,” Lily says, voice tight but with more affection than Ben’s heard from her, “tell me about Jack.”

With a wavering voice, Sammy explains what happened in the lake, and Ben fills in the blanks when Sammy can’t get words out anymore. Lily doesn’t cry; her expression barely changes beyond a few flickers, but Ben can tell how much the words meant to her, how much she needed to hear about what happened her brother and his willingness to save them all.

"He saved you when you were a kid," Lily repeats when Ben tells her, not quite disbelieving, but Ben thinks there's a flicker of recognition when she looks at his jacket. "Jack would've barely been out of high school back then. Probably would've - well, he would've just met Sammy."

Sammy looks at his feet as they walk, his pace slowing down fractionally. Ben squeezes his elbow.

"It was Jack from now," Ben explains, hoping Lily doesn't get too defensive about the timeline, "from after he was taken three years ago." 

Shockingly, Lily doesn't fight Ben's word, but her face twists into one of misery. "So you're saying all of this was inevitable." 

"I -" Ben's stomach turns, and from the grim,deathly look on Sammy's face as he trudges along, Ben can tell he'd already thought about that. "I guess it was. I guess - I guess Jack was always going to be taken. For me to live as a kid, Jack had to be taken. Twelve years later."

The three of them don't speak again. Ben feels Emily squeeze his hand, not saying a word. No words could possibly explain the awful numbness in Ben's chest, anyway.

Ben isn’t sure how much time passes until make it out of the forest and he sees the sign swinging for _Beauregard Trail_ that he’d seen when they first entered. He’s mainly just relieved time can pass at all.

Troy’s truck that they drove here in is sitting on the tiny parking lot, the only car there in the windy Alaskan morning, the sun’s position in the sky telling Ben that it is indeed morning.

“How’s that thing still here?” Troy asks, and even though the question seems rhetorical, he still looks to all of them for a moment in confusion. “One of the other Rangers was supposed to pick it up the day we left.”

“Troy,” Ben says, his voice wobbling a little, “it _is_ the day we left.”

“Right,” Troy stares at him, an involuntary shudder jumping through his shoulders.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Lily looks from Ben to Troy. “What day did you leave?”

“March 18th?” Mary looks to Emily who nods in affirmation.

“We didn’t leave until March 20th,” Lily says, panic rising in her voice as she gestures to herself and Pippa, whose reaction isn’t as extreme as Lily’s even as her mouth falls open in surprise. “You can’t expect me to believe that I’m in two places at once.”

“Three,” Ben says, knowing he’s not exactly helping, Lily’s withering glare more than proving that point. “Here, there, and the Void.”

“You’ll have to stay on the down low until the 20th,” Emily casts an uncertain look from Lily to Pippa. “I don’t know how this timeline stuff works, but we can’t have you messing up the timeline and creating a paradox.”

“Look who watched Doctor Who,” Lily rolls her eyes, but Ben thinks he knows her well enough now to see the anxiety and fear lurking underneath her snarky demeanor.

“Guys,” Troy calls after he jogs down to the truck to see what’s what. “The keys are still inside!”

“Oh thank God, I need to warm up,” Sammy half-mutters. While keeping a solid grip on Emily’s hand, Ben leans toward Sammy’s as they walk down, brushing their shoulders together.  

“We’ll have to squeeze now that we have extra passengers,” Troy says with an appraising look at Lily and Pippa. “Luckily I’m the biggest guy here and I’ll be driving. Can the rest of you squeeze in?”

“We’ll get in the back,” Emily says, gesturing to herself, Sammy, and Ben; Ben feels an inordinate amount of relief at the immediate assertion. He needs the contact right now. He does have to let go of them momentarily to squeeze into the car, but it isn’t long before he’s jostled between them, getting black sludge all over both of their clothes, but neither of them seem to mind or even really notice.

Mary shares the front seat with Pippa, overriding Troy’s protests about safety regulations, while Lily and Pete each take the middle seats. Troy, glancing back at all of them with a muttered comment about seatbelts, starts the car.

“I’m so tired,” Ben thinks he manages to say out loud before he begins to doze on Sammy’s shoulder, comforted by the feeling of Emily leaning against his own.

The exhaustion hits like a freight train. Ben is vaguely aware of driving through the Alaskan landscape, but only sees bits and pieces through half-closed eyes. No objects. Just light.

Light. Ben has to be grateful for light, for the sun beaming down on them, natural and real. A world with sun, a world the Shadowmaker can’t touch no matter how hard he tries.

Just because Ben will always remember the Shadowmaker’s touch doesn’t mean the monster can hurt him here. He’s safe  with his friends in the sunlight.

“Hey,” Sammy nudges Ben’s knee and Ben jolts awake. Sammy looks down at him with affection even through his grimace. “We’re back.”

Ben looks out the window at the research institute they had arrived at, where he and Sammy had split a cab to a lifetime ago when everything had seemed much easier. How could they have known what was waiting for them inside the belly of that monster?

They all pile out of the car, both Ben and Pippa stumbling, and Ben wonders if he’s the only person who’s still dizzy.  

A man Ben vaguely recognizes comes out the front doors of the building, his eyes wide with confusion and worry. “What’s going on? Was there a problem?”

“What do you mean?” Emily turns to him, a half-laugh bubbling out of her mouth that makes the man appear even more confused, looking from her to the rest of the team, shooting his eyebrows up when he sees Lily and Pippa.

“You’ve only been gone five hours,” he explains, and Ben finds himself laughing out loud at that, and can hear a few other voices join in.

“How long do you think we were really gone?” Mary asks, the sadness and wonder in her voice making it clear the question is rhetorical.

That’s a good thing. Ben doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to answer that question. He thinks vaguely of an academic paper he could write about this experience: _My Trip to Time Warp Hell._ The thought makes him smile, thinking of all the criticism he would get.

He hopes Jack makes it back to reality soon. He’d have a much better hypothesis than Ben.


	14. Epilogue

Recuperation isn’t easy, and Ben isn’t sure if his recovery will ever be complete.

Back when he was twelve, he remembers recovering in bits in pieces. He stayed in bed shivering most days, his mom curling up around him to keep him warm. Lots of chicken noodle soup. The first time Ben started the Harry Potter series. His mom spending every hour she could with him, working fewer hours than she ever had before.

It’s easier and harder now that Ben’s an adult living out of a hotel in Alaska. Harder because he has so much more comprehension of what happened to him and feels permanently stained by it, but easier because he isn’t alone. His friends are there, and they understand.

Ben’s days are mainly spent in the laboratory, compiling research and samples. Writing out his experiences while they’re still fresh. Sitting with Lily and her microphone. Talking to the lab aides and knowing that they don’t get it, not really. And they never will. No one ever will.

At night, Ben’s kept awake by horrific nightmares of the Shadowmaker crawling through his brain. He wants to stay strong, guilty over needing help, until  Mary shows up outside his room in her pajamas, saying she heard him screaming and would he like some hot chocolate?

Ben feels less guilty after that, and it isn’t long before he tentatively asks Sammy if he can just sleep in his room. Sammy’s face half-crumples at the question, but he says yes.

Each of them has a different way of coping. Pippa makes copious phone calls to her wife and tells her she’ll be home as soon as she can. Mary crochets knit scarves and hats for each of them, working so quickly Ben’s concerned for her fingers. Pete’s always blasting Drake so loud into his headphones to block out his own thoughts. Emily makes it through novels in a day on her Kindle rather than sleeping. Troy, even though he lives here in Fairbanks with his wife, obsesses over coming to the lab each day and taking care of each of them as best he can. Sammy has to be forced to move most days, mostly by Ben.

Lily’s throwing herself into her work, which Ben eventually drags Sammy into helping with. She has to figure out how the hell she’s going to make a podcast episode out of this story.

“No one’s gonna believe this shit,” she’ll mutter to herself over and over again, and Ben can’t help out with that much since it’s probably true. That doesn’t make their story false, though.

A week after they return to reality, Ben comes into Lily’s makeshift recording studio that’s actually just a lab station, to find Sammy and Lily sitting close enough that their legs almost touch. Ben’s going to make a sarcastic cooing noise until he sees what they’re doing.

Lily’s bent over Jack’s notebook, carefully turning each page as Sammy holds the binding into place.

Lily had, as Ben learned only from Pippa later, tried to jump in after them. She’d been caught in time by Troy - the notebook hadn’t been so lucky. 

Ben swallows painfully, hanging in the doorway for a moment as he watches Sammy smooth over a page. The notebook survived the Shadowmaker, but only just. It’s absolutely covered in black sludge, and while Emily and Lily had tried to get as much of it off as they could, most of Jack’s notes are indecipherable now.

“Hey,” Ben says from the door, voice a little strangled. Sammy turns to smile at him, strained but present. Lily’s eyes flick in his direction, which Ben figures as much of greeting as he’ll get.

“You’ve read this cover to cover, Ben,” Lily tells him when Ben sits down opposite them, still a little nervous at what Lily’s going to say or quite possibly accuse him of. “Any chance you can go through it and write out what you remember?”

“Of course,” Ben tells her quietly, and she almost nods at him in response. “Are you going to put in the show somehow?”

“I’m going to read it out – what I can, anyway, and put a filter over my voice,” Lily sighs. “Pippa’s idea. I don’t love it, but since we only have my audio and not Stevens’s –”

Sammy looks at the ground, even though Lily’s tone is more disappointed than accusing. Sammy’s audio recorder had been entirely shot when they got it back to the lab, nothing tangible on it other than static.

“What I don’t understand is the messages he left at the end, I can’t think of any way to logically explain that – even with the weird fucked up logic of the Void,” Lily groans, her head in her hands. “Which is barely logical to begin with…”

“I have a theory about that,” Ben says, and Lily raises a skeptical eyebrow at him. Sammy’s nod is encouraging if a little reticent, but Ben continues on anyway. “I got the notebook before we left, and all of his messages were inside – I just didn’t understand them then, I thought they were nonsense, like he was going crazy. When I got into the Void, time changed, and he hadn’t written those yet, so they disappeared and reappeared as he wrote them. So I got the notebook after he’d written them all.”

“That’s fucking confusing,” Lily rubs her forehead. “I might just leave this notebook shit out.”

“Leaving out Jack’s own words?” Sammy says, voice barely above a whisper. “C’mon, Lily. You know better than that. This was – _is_ – his thing. It would be disingenuous to pretend it’s yours.”

Lily’s mouth twists into a pained grimace. “Yeah. I guess so. I just wish you had the audio of you talking to Jack. Just so I could hear –”

Her voice breaks off, and Ben can hear her swallow. Sammy doesn’t touch Lily, but Ben can see his hand jerk in her direction before he thinks better of it and lets it fall at his side.

“I probably imagined it,” Sammy whispers as if he’s meaning to comfort her, and Ben catches the tremble in his voice. “It was probably just – just another hallucination.”

“Sammy –” Ben starts, reaching out for Sammy’s hand. It’s Lily who ends up hushing him, only less gently. She stamps on Sammy’s foot, causing a wince.

“Shut up,” Lily says, and points down at the notebook. “This is real, Sammy. This is him. Even if I don’t understand it, I know it’s him. And…and he left that final message.”

Sammy purses his lips.

Once they’d gotten out of the Void and had the chance to check the notebook again, there had only been one more message that Jack scrawled for them – well, really, for Sammy and Lily. It had been smudged by the black sludge, but not destroyed.

_Love you._

“It’s probably a goodbye,” Sammy says, switching his gaze at the ceiling, anything to avoid eye contact. Ben hopes Lily will steer him straight, but Lily only sighs in response.

Ben resists the urge to stamp on both of their feet.

“No, it’s a reminder,” Ben says firmly, “for the both of you. Don’t lose hope. C’mon, Jack’s the smartest guy in the world – he’ll make it out.”

“Your hero worship of him is truly sickening,” Lily says after a beat, but she’s half-smiling at the floor so Ben knows he’s won.

It’s not until later, in the hotel with Sammy, that Ben brings up the conversation again. “You know he’s coming back, right?”

Ben grabs Sammy's hand, but not to hold it. Instead, he lifts it up in front of Sammy's face, so Sammy has a full view of the golden band on his ring finger. Solid, real, and tangible proof.

Sammy hesitates for a moment, his face flickering somewhere between misery and blind hope as he looks at the ring.

“I know he’ll try.”

Ben figures that’s as good an answer as he’s going to get. 

Lily and Pippa are the first to leave Alaska, Pippa back to her wife and Lily to the hours of footage she’d collected for Wright On. Troy drives them to the airport, Sammy and Ben tagging along as well. Sammy hadn’t wanted to, but a disappointed look from Ben had convinced him.

“Thanks for everything,” Pippa hugs each of them in turn, an extra few seconds with Sammy that Ben’s not offended by. “We’ll send you the final version of the episode for approval before we release it.”

“Thanks,” Ben tells her as they hug. “And good luck.”

“I’ll leave you to say goodbye,” Pippa hesitates for a moment before patting Lily’s arm and wheeling her suitcase toward the security line.

Lily’s eyes travel from Sammy to Ben as she stares awkwardly with her backpack over one of her shoulders.

“I won’t out you,” Lily says to Sammy, her voice sharp even though the sentiment behind them seems genuine. “I won’t even use your real name if you don’t want me to.”

Sammy’s quiet for a moment before he says, with a little wonder in his voice, “I – you can use it. And you can – can talk about me. And Jack. The story doesn’t work without me and Jack. You know that.”

“I know,” Lily bites her lip. “But I still wouldn’t out you without giving you a say.”

“As long as you don’t talk shit about me,” there’s a laugh in Sammy’s voice, affection creeping into it that he seems almost surprised by.

“I always talk shit,” Lily says, sounding on the verge of choked up. 

They stand awkwardly in each other’s general proximity without speaking, making eye contact for half a second before steadfastly looking away. Ben can’t help himself from blurting out, “Oh my God, just hug goodbye already!”

They glare at each other the whole time, but they do listen to Ben and have a very weird, uncomfortable two-second long embrace that makes Ben put his head in his hands.

“Call me,” Lily says as they break away. “If Jack…”

“Yeah,” Sammy swallows. “You, too.”

“You know,” Lily glances around the airport with an embarrassment behind her eyes like someone might recognize her being affectionate toward someone, and puts a hand on Sammy’s shoulder. “If he doesn’t make it back – if he’s stuck there, or he died to save us – he would have been happy with that. He would have been happy to die knowing you were okay. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” Sammy’s voice is so small and strained Ben can hardly hear it. “I know.”

“So don’t do anything stupid then,” Lily grimaces before she wheels toward the security line without another word, Ben knows so she can make sure they don’t see any stray tears that betray her and escape from her eyes.

Ben steps tentatively toward Sammy, putting an arm around him that Sammy doesn’t lean into but doesn’t lean away from either.

“She’s not wrong,” Ben says, “but Jack’s going to make it back.”

"Lily was right about something else, too," Sammy's voice and face droop in misery and Ben gives him a questioning look, knowing he won't like whatever Sammy's going to say next. "Jack saved you when you were a kid. He was  _always_ going to go missing. From the day I met him, he was going to end up in the Void. Like - like fate."

"Hey," Ben says, an awful guilt spreading through him. It's not like that thought hasn't kept him up most nights, tossing and turning and waking Sammy in the bed next to him. "Maybe it is fate. But none of that means that he can't come  _back_."

"When you were twelve, Jack would've been nineteen," Sammy doesn't seem to be listening to Ben, staring into the middle distance as the airport moves around them, Lily long gone and out of sight by now. "I met Jack when we were nineteen. Fuck, Ben, the  _dates_ might even line up."

"It doesn't matter," Ben says, taking a hold of Sammy's wrist and digging his nails in to make Sammy look at him. Sammy does, brown eyes downcast and morose, and Ben doesn't know how to make that better. "Yes - maybe he was always going to go missing. But if that's the case, then so is everyone that's ever been in there is meant to go missing, and maybe that's unavoidable. Inevitable. But just because someone goes in doesn't mean they can't come out."

If Ben says it like that, he almost believes it himself. Then he remembers the Shadowmaker, eating at his head, and wonders if he can ever truly make it out. 

“I couldn’t save him, Ben,” Sammy says softly, barely looking at him. “He saved me –he saved  _you_ \- but I couldn't save him."

“Stop blaming yourself,” Ben moves to clench his left hand in his own, finding the engagement ring on Sammy’s hand to remind him it’s there. “Time is so fucked up, Sammy – if Jack makes it out, it’s going to be to come back to _you_. You’re saving him right now whether you know it or not.”

“That’s a pretty circular logic,” Sammy mutters, but he lets Ben hug him all the same, and Ben thinks he takes some comfort from that. Ben sure as hell does. 

Mary and Pete are meant to fly out three days after, both on the same flight to Chicago before Mary connects to Atlanta and Pete connects to Jersey City.

“Thought you were from King Falls,” Sammy says when Pete informs him of the next morning’s travel plans as they sit in the hotel bar, after Pete insisted they get drinks before he goes for some reason. Maybe he’ll miss them or something equally crazy.

“Originally,” Ben mutters and Pete just cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Some of us that are smart and capable get out of the small towns we’re from,” Pete says in a sing-song voice. Ben kicks him under the table.

“Some of us _wanted_ to stay in small towns,” Ben grumbles and Sammy holds a hand out in an attempt to separate them.

“C’mon guys, you’ve gotten along so well lately,” Sammy reminds them.

“Yeah, because we’re both too traumatized to be mean,” Ben says it as a joke but Pete’s grimace at him reminds him that it’s probably true. He tries to sound more understanding when he speaks next. “I – give me a call next time you’re home, Pete. Okay?”

Pete nods, seemingly almost maybe approaching pleasant. “I’ll ring you up when I visit my mama for Christmas.”

Drinks only last a few more minutes, because that’s as long as Ben and Pete can possibly get along. When they part ways at the hotel stairs, it’s with some general awkwardness.

“Should we…hug?” Ben asks, and Pete gets a determined look on his face as he nods, and they touch shoulders for maybe half a second until they jump away.

“That was weird,” Pete says, and Ben nods in affirmation.

“Never doing that again.”

“Well, I’m not hugging you, Pete,” Sammy raises an eyebrow at him like he’s daring Pete to step closer. “Safe travels.”

Their goodbye with Mary is much more affectionate as they help her pack her suitcase that morning. Emily is there too, and she and Mary cry as they embrace and promise to keep in touch.

“I love you boys,” Mary turns to Sammy and Ben and squeezes the life out of each of them in turn. “We’ll see each other soon, I’m sure. Tim’s mother says he’s been doing so much better since – well, since we got back from that place. Do you think…that he somehow _knew_?”

“I have no idea,” Ben tells her honestly, but hoping that Mary’s life goes back to at least some version of normal. She wipes tears away and hugs them each again briefly as she catches her taxi.

Emily doesn’t leave until the end of the week; she keeps coming up with excuses to keep her in the labs in Fairbanks until it’s undeniable that she has to get back to her research position in DC. Ben’s heart hurts at the idea of letting her go. Still, he knows that they can’t stay here forever, that they have to go their separate ways, to their separate lives. He just hopes it’s not forever.

Ben’s hope for the future lights up when Emily kisses his cheek at the airport, a blush staining her cheeks.

“Tell Reagan hello,” Ben manages to stammer out. “Hopefully I’ll be back in DC one of these days.”

“I hope you are,” Emily squeezes his hand. “And if you’re not – I’ll visit King Falls sooner rather than later, okay?”

Ben nods, trying to contain his beam, as Emily hugs both Sammy and Troy goodbye next.

“Bye Benny,” Emily finally turns as she’s leaving, and Ben resists the urge to run for her.

“Should’ve kissed her,” Sammy says under his breath as soon as Emily’s out of earshot. Ben steps on his foot.

“Shut up,” Ben mutters. “Someday – someday maybe I will. When she comes to visit.”

“I was wonderin’,” Troy says as he watches Emily’s retreating form, “since you two are the only ones left up here, if you’d like to get out of that hotel and come stay with me and the Mrs. for a few days. She’d love to have you. And I would, too.”

“Of course,” Ben says, elbowing Sammy.

Sammy shfits, a guilty look in his eye, “We wouldn’t want to intrude…” but Troy shushes him.

They stay with Troy another week. He and Loretta are great hosts, and when Ben wakes up screaming with nightmares, he has Sammy on the couch above him and Troy in the next room who understand what’s got him so fragile.

“I’ve lived here all my life, but this has shaken me something good,” Troy tells them quietly one night like he’s been thinking about telling them this for a while. “I might try to get a transfer to a different part of the state, or even down the mainland US. I just don’t care for this place much anymore. Knowing that _thing_ is out there.”

“King Falls is nice,” Ben says from where he’s sitting curled up on the couch. “Similar terrain. Small town. I bet you’d like it.”

Troy grins at him. “I bet I would, Benny.”

Ben realizes a second later that he’s never actually asked Sammy if he’s coming back to King Falls with him; he sort of assumed Sammy wouldn’t be going back to Denver, that he wouldn’t want to wait for Jack alone. When Sammy hadn’t gone with Lily, Ben figured that he was Sammy’s obvious choice.

 “You’re coming home with me, right?” Ben asks when they’re alone, after Troy goes out to get another stack of firewood. Sammy leans away from Ben with a look of trepidation in his eye.

“I know that’s what you want,” Sammy says after a moment. “But Ben, I – I don’t want to overstay my welcome. I’m really not the kind of person –”

“My apartment has an extra bedroom,” Ben decides the best path here is to ignore any reservations Sammy pretends to have. “And you told me that first day on the hike that you can write from anywhere. Come on, Sammy. You’ve been alone too long. And besides – I promised Lily. I promised _Jack.”_

“I guess there's nothing more terrifying than breaking a promise to those two,” Sammy agrees with a laugh somewhere between his eyes that he isn’t quite letting out. “Alright, Ben. Okay.”

“Besides,” Ben says softly, because he knows this will make Sammy cringe away from him, “you’re my best friend.”

Surprisingly, Sammy doesn’t cringe, blush, or mutter something about bad taste. Instead, he says, in a smaller voice than Ben expects from him, “You’re my best friend, too.”

It’s a Sunday when Troy drops them off at the airport, a smile on his face as he chuckles.

“You know, I’ll miss these airport runs,” Troy says as he pulls their bags out of his trunk. “I’ll miss you both a hell of a lot, too.”

“Miss you already,” Ben says, hugging Troy goodbye and not minding that his head barely reaches Troy’s shoulder.

“I love you both,” Troy hugs Sammy, his voice getting choked up. “And I’ll see you real soon, okay?”

“Promise?” Ben asks and Troy nods. Sammy slams the trunk down and Troy drives away with a final sad wave in their direction.

“I love _you_ too, you know,” Ben says quietly as they watch Troy’s car disappear, and Sammy makes a noise that sounds like agreement. He knows Sammy has trouble articulating his feelings, so Ben doesn’t mind the ambiguity. He thinks he knows what Sammy means.

Their flight goes to Spokane, and Ben sleeps on Sammy’s shoulder for half of it – repeating history, he supposes. This time, however, a nightmare jolts him awake and Sammy spends the next twenty minutes calming him and openly, loudly criticizing the flight attendant for being insensitive when she tells Ben to quiet down.

 “It’s ridiculous,” Ben says as they get out of the Spokane airport into a nice, breezy spring evening. “Fucking ridiculous that my car has been parked here this whole time. I can’t believe that. I’ve been through so much and my car’s just been _sitting_ here.”

“That’s generally what cars do when no one’s using them, Ben,” the corners of Sammy’s lips turn upward. “Sit.”

“You _know_ it’s ridiculous,” Ben tells him. “Where’s your car? Do you even have one?”

“At my apartment – I took an Uber to the airport in Denver, since I wasn’t really planning on –” Sammy says, voice taking on a strange quality. Ben quickly puts an arm around Sammy as they walk, and Sammy doesn’t shove him away which is a good sign.

“We’ll get a one way flight to Denver soon, get your stuff, make a road trip of it,” Ben says, trying to avoid where Sammy had been heading with this. “Nice good friend bonding time. I mean, the Void really cements your friendships but it’s not _fun._ We need to do something fun.”

“Ben, I can really just go back to Denver on my own, this isn’t nec –” Sammy stumbles over his words, and Ben sighs.

“Sammy,” Ben says, voice light but firm. “If you try to leave me, I’m going to wrap myself around your legs like a five year old and refuse to move. Literally, not just metaphorically. I’m really small. I can do it with almost no discomfort.”

Sammy huffs out a small laugh. “You’re a good friend, Ben Arnold.”

“I try my best,” Ben says.

Sammy’s mostly quiet as Ben drives them the hour back to King Falls, pointing out various touristy spots on the way that he’ll take Sammy to once they get settled. He begins telling Sammy about all of his favorite people in town, people Sammy will like – Ron and Archie especially. He doesn’t want Sammy to think he won’t be accepted here just because it’s a small town.

Sammy smiles at him a few times but is mostly melancholy, which Ben figures is probably a step up from however he’d feel if he was on his own on his way back to Colorado.

They end up sprawled out on the couch when they get back to Ben’s apartment, with some mindless TV on to keep them distracted. Sammy seems to like the apartment, or at least he likes Ben and not being alone, so Ben counts that as a victory.

Ben wakes up to sunlight streaming through his window.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to that again, having natural light waking him in the morning. Sammy twitches in his sleep from where he’s curled up in Ben’s armchair, and Ben tries to be quiet as he goes back to his bedroom to start unpacking.

He hears a terrified noise a few minutes later and scrambles back into the living room to find Sammy looking around wildly, relaxing only when he catches sight of Ben.

“Hey, you’re okay,” Ben rushes over to Sammy, and Sammy leans away from him with pink cheeks but Ben won’t let that stand. He rests his head against Sammy’s shoulder. “I thought I was the one with the bad nightmares. Don’t worry – you’re gonna be alright.”

“Just – sorry,” Sammy mutters, blushing harder.

“Shut up,” Ben advises him. “And go get ready – I’m taking you to the best breakfast of your life. Twenty minutes, okay?”

 Ben goes back to unpacking his suitcase, but he keeps his door open so he can see Sammy and the doorway to the bathroom. Just in case Sammy needs to catch sight of a friendly face.

The last thing Ben unpacks from his bag is Jack’s notebook – Lily had copied down as much as she could from it, but decided that Sammy probably needed it more than she did. Sammy hadn’t wanted to look at it any more than he had to, so Ben took back responsibility for it.

Gingerly, he carries it out to the kitchen to set it on the table. He doesn’t want the thing to get in worse shape than it’s already in, and figures he’ll do some googling later today about how to properly preserve pages that are half-covered in supernatural goop.

“Hey,” Sammy comes out of the bathroom, hair tied back and looking slightly more human than last night, “you ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Ben says, quickly hiding the notebook from Sammy’s view with a well-placed paper towel rack. “You’re going to love Rose’s.”

Sammy nods like he isn’t sure but he knows he trusts Ben, which is the look Ben thinks he’s going to get most often from Sammy in the coming days. Ben has fully accepted that as his new reality, though, and couldn’t be more hopeful about the future even if the present was still going to suck.

“There’s still one question I have,” Ben says, his thoughts still ruminating over the notebook as he and Sammy get in his car and Ben starts driving back up Route 72 to get to Rose’s. “Who sent me Jack’s notebook? Everything else, I have an explanation for, so I can file it away in boxes in the back of my mind but…the notebook is gonna bug me.”

Sammy shrugs, looking more out the window than at Ben. “I don’t know. It had to get out of the Void somehow. Maybe you sent it to yourself.”

“I know time is fucked,” Ben says, shaking his head, a little dizzy with even the thought. “And I’m the king of conspiracy theories. But even _that’s_ a reach for me.”

Sammy laughs genuinely; Ben catches a flash of soft, affectionate eyes on his for just a second. He feels a little surge of pride.

“I still have the envelope it came in,” Ben says. “I’ll let you look at it when we get home to see if you catch something I didn’t. But for now, let’s try to put all that shit behind us and have like, ten helpings of pancake puppies.”

“Sounds delicious,” Sammy says.

Ben rambles for most of the rest of the drive. As he pulls into the parking lot of Rose’s, he says “Maybe we can go down to the Bait Shack today – or, ooh, the public library, you’d really like it. Or my mom’s house! I called her last night to say we got in safe, and she really wants to meet you.”

“Oh,” Sammy sounds warmer than he does reticent, even as pink tinges his cheeks. “I – yeah, that’d be nice, Ben.”

“You’ll probably meet some locals in here,” Ben unbuckles his seatbelt. “I mean, Rose for sure, she’s the best cook _ever,_ hands down. Herschel and Cecil are in here a lot, they’re these two grumpy old fishermen…ooh, and Ron, Ron’s in here all the time…”

Ben jogs ahead of Sammy’s long legged walk to hold the door open for him, making Sammy give him an exasperated but fond look as he crosses the threshold.

Sammy stops so short just inside the doorway that Ben practically crashes into his back. “Dude, what –”

Ben cranes his neck around Sammy and finds himself freezing in place as well, mouth falling open in abject shock.

Jack Wright’s sitting at the bar, half-turned toward them. When he looks up from the counter, his eyes widen and his mouth falls open, lighting up with unbridled joy clear in the way he smiles, larger than Ben’s ever seen someone smile before.

Jack looks so much better than he did the last time they met face to face, but not quite like his old pictures. His face has been cleaned up  no longer bloody, though Ben can see a few stray scars on his neck and arms. His clothes are clean and no longer ripped. Maybe even new, a long-sleeved grey shirt rolled up to the sleeves. He’s clearly shaved recently, only the slightest bit of stubble on his cheeks.

Ben thinks he might be hallucinating until Jack speaks, voice clear and delighted as he stares at Sammy,  eyes wide and reverent. “You’re back!”

Ben glances from Jack to Sammy rapidly; Sammy’s nearly shaking as he gazes at Jack, his breath coming out unevenly, frozen like his reaction time is completely shot.

The grin on Jack’s face falters just for a second when Sammy doesn’t move, but then Sammy’s rushing toward Jack and Jack’s standing up and they’re embracing in the middle of the diner, Sammy choking out more than a few sobs.

“Morning, Rose,” Ben says softly as he waves to the matron behind the bar, who waves back with a raised eyebrow in Sammy and Jack’s direction. Ben just shakes his head. The diner isn’t busy. This isn’t a show, and even if it was, Ben doesn’t think Sammy and Jack would even notice anyone else in the world right now.

“You’re here, you’re here, holy shit, you’re _here_ ,” Sammy doesn’t let go of Jack, barely moves his head from where it’s pressed between Jack’s neck and shoulder. “What – what _happened_? _How_ are you here?”

“Ben was right,” Jack says quietly, and he smiles at Ben from past Sammy’s shoulder. He manages to get Sammy to move his head, cupping his cheek and running a hand through his hair lightly. Ben can see Sammy’s face tremor at the touch, even as his smile at Jack is utterly brilliant. Broken, but brilliant.

“I usually am,” Ben doesn’t want to insert himself into this moment, but he comes close enough that he can put a hand on Jack’s arm, just to see if he’s solid. He is. Amazingly so. “What was I right about?”

“The Void was weakest when it transitioned,” Jack explains, moving one of his hands to put it on top of Ben’s and squeeze. “I developed this theory about how time works in there – time isn’t real in there, but it still exists out here, so the entries to the Void in transition moments are the only moments that happen in linear time. But _I’m_ not in linear time, which is the problem. So I started thinking about the divide between Colorado and Alaska, and the more I thought about it, the clearer a path became for me.”

Sammy makes a surprised noise, turning to Ben with wide eyes. “What you said – about a path through time.”

“Yeah!” Jack grins down at Ben, making Ben feel a bit like he’s melting. “It wasn’t long before this – this hole opened in the ground like a chasm and I jumped. When I woke up, it was light outside. I was in the forest up in Alaska, I could tell from the trailhead.”

“When…” Ben starts, and Jack bites his lip.

“About two months ago,” Jack says, and Sammy stares at him with widening eyes, and Jack moves his hand from Ben’s to grasp both of Sammy’s with his. “I’m so, so sorry. I would’ve called right away, but I knew I couldn’t. I knew that I’d never get out of the Void in the first place if you didn’t go in. I couldn’t fuck up the timeline. You have no idea how badly I just wanted to see you - but I couldn't. And then you guys took fucking forever to get back here –”

“How’d you know?” Sammy asks him, seemingly just remembering where he is if the jolt backward he gets as he gazes around the cramped interior of Rose’s Diner. “To come to King Falls?”

“Ben said he was from there,” Jack nods in Ben’s direction. “And – and I don’t know where you live now, so I figured this was my best bet. And Ben seemed like the type who wouldn’t just let you run off –”

“Damn right,” Ben mutters and Sammy and Jack both give him identical looks of affection.

“I had to avoid Border Security since I had no ID and couldn’t tell anyone I was a missing person or it would've made the news,” Jack explains, “but I found my way here eventually, even though it took a few weeks. I accessed the Internet by that point, figured out from Facebook that Ben still lived here. I stopped at a post office on the way to mail you my –”

“Notebook,” Ben finishes, beaming at him. He knew Jack was the smartest guy in the world. “ _You_ mailed me the notebook.”

Jack nods, biting his lip. “Sorry I didn’t reach out. I’m so sorry. To both you. But Sammy –”

“I understand,” Sammy says, his voice shaking, but it’s not with fear or anxiety. It seems like a combination of shock and wonder. “Well, sort of. Maybe. I don’t really care, honestly. You’re – you’re here now? You’re real?”

“Real as can be,” Jack half-shrugs, but the look in  his eye doesn't get any less delighted. “King Falls has been pretty nice to me since I got here. Told them I was a friend of Ben’s waiting for him to get home, and I got pretty well taken care of.”

“Well, it’s the truth,” Ben says and Jack grins at him.

“S’cuse me boys, but you gonna order?” Rose’s voice rings out from behind them and Ben can’t help but laugh.

“Should we sit down?” Ben gestures toward a booth. “Or –”

“I think you promised me the best breakfast of my life,” Sammy says, his laugh finally carefree and overjoyed, and he hugs Jack again tight enough to break bones. Jack laughs into Sammy’s shoulder, almost lifting him off the ground.  

“Table for three, please,” Ben tells Rose, who’s giving them all affectionate looks from behind the cash register.

“This some kind of reunion?” Rose asks, rounding the bar with three menus in her hand.

“You could say that,” Ben says as Sammy finally lets Jack go to sit down, though he still keeps a tight hold on Jack’s hand. Jack looks down at him with bright eyes and Ben knows Jack’s planning on never letting go again.

“Hey,” Jack’s eyes soften when he sees Ben looking at them, and he reaches his free hand toward Ben. Ben leans into Jack and lets the breath get hugged out of him even though Jack’s only using the one arm. “Thank you, Ben. I never would’ve made it out without you.”

“Well, I don’t think we need to tell you that we wouldn’t have survived without you,” Ben says, reluctantly letting go to Jack to let him sit down. Ben scoots into the other side of the booth, delighted at the way Jack and Sammy stare at one another like everything is brand new.

“Sammy,” Ben kicks Sammy’s leg under the table when he remembers. “Give Jack his ring back!”

“No, no,” Jack laughs, pushing Sammy’s hand back when his eyes light up and he reaches for the ring. “You keep it, Sammy.”

“It’s yours, I got it for you,” Sammy's voice is so small and wondrous as he stares at Jack, but Jack just shakes his head, the look in his eye otherwise the exact mirror of the love shining out of Sammy's. 

“I think you need it more than I do right now,” Jack says, voice soft, and Sammy lets his hand fall back to his side, obviously a little happy to keep it.

“Well, we’re gonna get married so we’ll both have one someday,” Sammy mutters before his eyes suddenly widen like he just thought of something. When he turns to Jack again, it’s with trepidation instead of delight, and Jack frowns at him. “I mean – are we….still – I mean, it’s been three years, do you still want to –”

“Shut up, don’t be stupid,” Jack whispers, and he leans in like he’s going to kiss Sammy but stops himself short, pulling away. “I – later, I’ll – later.”

“Don’t stop on account of me,” Ben tells them in all seriousness. “Or on account of small town diners. Rose is very good about these things.”

They don’t kiss, but Sammy does nestle even more into Jack’s side as he looks up into Jack’s eyes. “Thank you. For the ring. I – I love you so much, and I should’ve taken all of this more seriously – your research, the Void, everything. If I had stopped you - if I had _believed_ you –”

“Then the same thing would’ve happened,” Jack says quietly. “I shouldn’t have gone in the first place, but – but I guess it’s a good thing I did. Otherwise, Ben wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

“It’s true,” Ben says, stifling a bubble of guilt that he feels at that. “I would’ve died when I was twelve. Sometimes things are meant to happen. Fate, destiny, whatever. What matters is that we all survived it and we’re all _here_.”

“I’ve gotta call Lily,” Sammy says with sudden realization, his eyes widening not with fear but a kind of joy, the first that Ben thinks he’s seen on Sammy’s face in direct relation to Lily Wright. “She’ll be so happy, Jack.”

Sammy starts to dig his phone out of his pocket until Rose approaches the table clucking her tongue.

“Now, now,” Rose points at the phone with her red press on nail. “No phones allowed here, you’ll wait ‘til you’re done eating. Now what can I get you boys?”

“Three orders of pancake puppies,” Ben tells her, knowing Sammy and Jack won’t stop gazing at each other to look at the menu. “And a pot of coffee.”

“I guess I’ll wait until after breakfast,” Sammy bites his lip with a laugh as Rose retreats. “She’ll kill me if she ever finds out I waited even an extra minute to call, but…”

“Thanks for ordering, Ben,” Jack says, his voice half laughing until it drops into something much more serious. “And for everything else. Especially for everything else.”

“Just promise me I’m invited to your wedding,” Ben smiles and Sammy snorts in response like that should be obvious. “And that you’ll come visit me.”

Sammy squints at Ben. “I’m sorry, did I not just agree to come and live with you?”

“Oh,” Ben says, and then the full force of affection hits him and has him practically beaming at Sammy. _“Oh!_ You – you really want to stay? I thought – I mean, Jack’s here –”

“Well Jack, I have a horrific apartment in Denver that’s just a testament to three years of being without you,” Sammy turns to Jack, who has already winked at Ben fondly. “I’ve been in King Falls less than twelve hours, but –”

“King Falls is perfect,” Jack agrees, then bites his lip. “I – you were in Denver? Not LA? Did you…”

“Of course I followed you,” Sammy says, eyes not quite on Jack’s, and this time Jack does kiss him, just briefly.

Ben makes an _aww_ noise and they both turn to laugh at him, Sammy a little disgruntled and Jack wide and happy.

“Wow,” Ben says, grinning at them. “So much can change in just a few weeks – now I have two best friends! Who are going to live with me. Shh, Sammy, I don’t want to hear your protests. At least until you get your own place. Or forever is fine, too. I mean, Jack’s been my hero for years. Since I was twelve without even realizing it!”

“ _Ben_ ,” Jack’s cheeks turn pink, but he’s smiling back.

“Troy might move here,” Ben continues, “Emily is going to visit...”

“You’re most excited about that,” Sammy tells him with a raised eyebrow and Ben shushes him.

“Jack’s back, so you don’t have to be sad and snarky anymore,” Ben puts his hand on top of Sammy’s. “He’s home. Everything is going to be okay now. Even though the Void is still out there –”

A familiar nausea passes through Ben at the thought of the Shadowmaker, but he knows the Shadowmaker’s weakness now. Even if he could touch this world, he wouldn’t be able to reach Ben right now.

Jack seems to get Ben’s meaning immediately; his voice is soft and gentle when he fills in the rest of Ben’s thought.

“We’re safe together.”


End file.
